>>510042287
Ball lighting happens all the time, but it's usually high up. In some places it's been known to precede earthquakes by a few minutes. They have even created something like ball lightning in a lab.
One working theory is that it's like a slowly discharging capacitor made of plasmas. The center has a charge and the outside has the opposite charge, and for some physical reason they can't combine instantly like one would expect. The voltage difference in the "gas-plasma capacitor" can go into the hundreds of thousands.