Lightning strikes in the Sandia Mountains, literally

Midden-marauder

Sr. Member
Dec 10, 2023
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Suspected stone fulgurite in arkosic limestone, ancient seabed deposit that makes up much of the surface layer of rock in the Sandia Mountains. Apparently blasted hole, black, glassy consistency. A reasonably strong magnetic anomaly was found in association with the feature, negative directly over the point of impact rising to positive around it. I'm about 95% certain of my assessment here, this local variety of limestone exhibits little, if any magnetism at the lowest altitudes but at higher altitudes, especially the crest, it's so magnetized in most spots that trying to locate exact points of lighting impact is basically impossible, the crest has been pummeled with lightning for many thousands of years.

This is one of many LIRM (lightning induced remanent magnetism) type anomalies I've identified now and the first official strong fulgurite candidate found. Some LIRM I've located at the base of various dead trees split or blown in two which is telling. Unfortunately this fulgurite is fused into solid stone so I couldn't recover it but I'll find one I can excavate pretty soon, I need loose soil, sand ideally.

Yeah, the magnetometry game is a wacky rabbit hole but it's pretty cool I won't lie, the types of things it can turn up are mysterious at times but it's a steep learning curve, steeper than metal detecting for sure. Still self teaching but the results I'm getting are very encouraging!

Still on official hiatus from relic hunting but I'm learning a new related skill set and it could change certain things about the way I relic hunt going forward, interpreting the data can be a little fussy at times but an anomaly is an anomaly especially when it's repeatable. All in good fun!
 

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