I just saw the coolest thing!!!!!  

now thats cool well i don't know and i havent yet seen one but it might have been real cool looking :) lucky you . .

I can't remember ever seeing anything like that. How cool!! Have to read through the other responses to see if anyone has any sort of explanation for it. If not, I'll have to go do some research! LOL

Wow, I have never seen red lightning before but it muts ahve looked awesome! I enjoyed reading TheresaK's description of it. Maybe I'll see it one day~~ weather is a fascinating thing.... even though I'm kinda scared of lighning, LOL

I am from India, 62 +, a retired professor of physics, I have not seen 'red' lightening. Here we see 'bright-white' only. But as a man of Physics, I tell you white light indicates more powerful sparks than the red nes. See my profile, be my friend, let us enjoy by responding to discussions, thanks.

That must have looked really cool.. I have Never seen Red lightning befor although I have seen pics of ones that seem to be pinky red in coulour, but maybe not the same..... I would of got scared though:D because it seems out of the ordinanry, I love watching Lightning but also scared of being struck......

No i havenot seen anything like that yet nor heard so what can i say about it.

If I don't remember wrongly, what you have seen is a sprite which I learn it during Geography subject in my Secondary School. There are two new types of lightning have been verified: red sprites and blue jets. These atmospheric discharges occur very high in the Earth's atmosphere - much higher than the familiar form of lightning. Red sprites appear red in color and go from the tops of clouds to as high as the ionosphere - an ionized layer 90 kilometers above the Earth's surface. They last only a small fraction of a second. The existence of red sprites has been suggested previously, but only in 1994 were aircraft flown above massive thunderstorms with the high speed video equipment necessary to verify these spectacular events. Scientists are unsure of the cause and nature of red sprites.

I almost never see lightnings. And I didn't even know there were red lightnings, but I bet they are pretty cool. ;)

Here were I live, we don't have much of it. Some storms once in a while, but lightnings only once in a blue moon. Hehehe!

About the explanation for that.. Well, lightnings are made of plasma. I don't know what causes the different colors, but flames, also made of plasma, have blue, red and yellow tones. I suppose lighnings might have all these tones then, depending on the temperature and on the electric density it has. Or I could have just said the most stupid thing ever. :)