Diego Rhamon Reis da Silva: The Lightning Hunter with Asperger’s

Diego Rhamon Reis da Silva, 28, from Pernambuco, has difficulty interacting with people — he discovered only a few years ago that he has Asperger’s. However, he always liked to observe the sky and it was in the clouds that he found a passion that turned into a job: meteorologist, he has been a professional “lightning hunter” for more than a decade.

His was the photo of an “electrical union” that, being so famous and important for science, made the cover of one of the main scientific magazines in the world and even ended up in the newspaper “The New York Times”. This is not Rhamon’s only feat, as he likes to be called. He is also the first Brazilian to capture other electrical phenomena, such as “giant jets”, “crown glows” and ascending rays.

It is magnetic, a ray attractor
Luciene Reis, mother of Rhamon

A resident of São José dos Campos (SP), where he is studying for a doctorate in spatial geophysics at Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), he was lucky to be at the right time and place. And with a super camera at the ready. From the balcony of his apartment, the idea was to record storms, but he also captured in great detail how lightning rods work.

Due to the quality of the visualization and the unprecedented level of detail of the ray channels, the photo was considered the best record in the world by specialists.
Diego Rhamon, meteorologist

to understand the picture

The scene was recorded in March 2021, but only surfaced this year. Extremely rare, it shows the various branches of lightning and the lightning rods trying to connect to them. This protective equipment tries to create a safer path for us, exploiting the characteristic that electrical discharges always seek the easiest path, with less air resistance, to reach the ground.

The image shows the following:

A descending ray of negative charge, with many branches, approaches the ground with a velocity of 370 km/s

Lightning rods and ledges on buildings in the area launch 31 upward discharges, which compete to connect with the lightning

Just before the “electric union”, the spark that connects with the lightning increases in caliber and branches out; it can be seen in the right corner

The snap was taken 25 millionths of a second before the lightning hit one of the buildings.

A camera operating at 40,000 frames per second was used.

You could see the large area under the influence of the beam that was descending. All lightning rods responded. This amount of ascending rays had never been recorded, nor with this level of detail in the physics of the phenomenon.
Diego Rhamon

Due to its scientific importance, the photo was printed on the cover of the magazine “Geophysical Research Letters”, one of the most important in the area, which published a article about the registry, co-authored by Rhamon.

Interestingly, despite there being more than 30 lightning rods in the vicinity, the electrical discharge did not connect to any of them, but to a chimney of an oven on the roof of one of the buildings. Like lightning rods, objects, animals and even people also shoot positive charges, and therefore can be hit.

The impact produced a lot of damage, which could have hurt someone, including pieces of concrete that fell from the 26th floor, into the condominium pool area. The record also makes clear the need for an efficient safety net.

the high speed camera

The scene is part of a video, which was only captured thanks to a high-speed camera. The Phantom v2012, used by Rhamon, records footage super slow, so much so that it’s used to film videos of balloons popping or bullets being fired.

The camera belongs to Inpe and costs around US$ 150,000 (R$ 750,000). Quite in demand, she only stayed with the meteorologist for seven months. Since then, it has been used in South Africa and the USA. The reunion between the two should take place this year.

Although he uses powerful equipment, Rhamon started like any young man: with a cell phone. Since then, he has lost count of how many photos he has taken. Guess it’s around 500,000 images — all saved and cataloged in its archives; some of them published on your YouTube channel. The cameras he bought along the way, from the most amateur ones, are also kept like treasures in a bedroom closet.

‘Giant jets’, ‘crown glow’ and rising beam

Rhamon attributes a turnaround in his career to his advisor, physicist Marcelo Saba, who in 2003 began a major study of rays with high-speed cameras. Still ongoing, the work has already generated the world’s largest bank of videos of electrical discharges. The research is supported by FAPESP.

He also takes advantage of the structure, with cameras that are on 24 hours a day to record the weather, for astronomical monitoring. As regional director for the Southeast of Bramon (Brazilian Meteor Monitoring Network), he often registers a bright meteor crossing the sky.

Even before having access to the super camera, he had already caught unprecedented and important phenomena for science:

First “gigantic jets” (“giant jets”, powerful electrical discharges above the clouds) from Brazil, in Campina Grande, in 2017;

First “crown flash” (“crown glow”, a type of aurora at the edge of the clouds, due to the dynamics of ice crystals) from Brazil, in Campina Grande, in 2017;

First and second “ascending ray” (which forms on the ground and goes upwards, towards the clouds, and not the other way around, as is normal) from Vale do Paraíba, in São José dos Campos (SP), in 2022.

I wanted to study clouds and be an astronaut

He appeared so much on TV in Paraíba that people were already calling him the ‘lightning boy’. Since he was a child he said that he was going to study clouds and that he was going to be an astronaut. Then he forgot this part and became a meteorologist
Luciene Reis

The boy records daily, in photos and videos, the behavior of clouds and phenomena associated with storms, especially lightning.

It’s like it’s a natural obligation for me. I took my first photo when I was 5 years old. When the internet appeared, what I liked most was looking for images of this type. I spent hours downloading videos of tornadoes
Diego Rhamon

Rhamon’s walk to the photo highlighted by the New York Times was not an easy one. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s only at the age of 19, after dealing throughout his childhood and adolescence with bullying from peers who did not understand his condition. “I always knew he was different. He learned to read and write by himself, he was way ahead of his age”, says Lucilene.

At that time, he had misdiagnoses, such as OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). “He recognized himself as autistic when watching a report by Dr. Dráuzio Varella on TV”, says Luciene.

After that, he reported in writing everything he felt to the doctor, who applied neurological tests, including the IQ test. He scored 144 points, an intelligence considered of a genius – something common for people with Asperger’s, a form of autism spectrum disorder.

Rhamon was very happy with the diagnosis. He wrote a letter to colleagues telling them about his syndrome and asking forgiveness for being different. It was read in an auditorium at the end of high school
Luciene Reis

The mother has always fought to give her son the best conditions and for his rights, such as taking tests in a separate room at college to avoid distractions. She also accompanies him everywhere. Rhamon passed the entrance exam in first place and they moved to Campina Grande (PB), where there was the only meteorology course in the region, at UFCG.

Afterwards, they went to Cachoeira Paulista, in the interior of São Paulo, where he did his master’s degree at Inpe, and now they live in São José dos Campos for his doctorate. The 87-year-old grandmother also came along.

“I retired, sold everything and we went with him. Maybe the next stop will be outside the country. There are already people wanting to take him”, dreams Luciene.