Lightning colour change

[defaid]

I'm repairing lightning-damaged equipment at work and a colleague has just been wondering if the light in a lightning stroke outlasts the current. We think yes, because lightning's light is partly from incandescence and partly from luminescence but that leads to another question:

 

While the luminescence presumably stops when the current stops, the incandescence must persist until the plasma's cooled so is there a brief colour change before the flash fades entirely?

[jgf]

This is persistence of vision, the lightning bolt itself is virtually instantaneous.  FWIW, a lightning bolt is about an inch in diameter, the flickering associated with them is from several bolts created simultaneously.

[defaid]

I think I may have found confirmation (though it could just be confirmation bias...) but on a smaller scale, Slow Mo Guy Dan got a nasty Van der Graaf shock here:

 

 https://youtu.be/HDzVD-cqiWM?feature=shared&t=234 

 

There's a single frame in which, after the purple/blue nitrogen luminescence, the spark becomes distinctly redder though to be honest the very faint line that follows afterwards may be the incandescence (certainly is on the back of Dan's finger). I'm pretty sure the same happens in lightning but I can't find a suitably exposed high framerate colour video.

 

Slow Mo Guys also did a lightning video in Singapore. It looks monochrome but there are some great sequences of stepped leaders descending before the main arc flares everything out.