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Feb 5, 2024 · The brilliant white streak we witness, a stark contrast to the darkness of the storm clouds, momentarily illuminating the night sky with its searing glow. While white lightning dominates the stage, its loyal companion, blue lightning, adds a dazzling brushstroke to the storm’s canvas.
Mar 3, 2024 · A distant thunderstorm, alive with lightning, is making itself known. Every second, lightning in thunderstorms flashes at least 60 times somewhere on the planet, sometimes even near the North...
Aug 19, 2020 · It might be cool to look at from a safe distance, but lightning kills more than 20 people each year in the United States and injures hundreds more — with some survivors suffering lifelong neurological damage. One thing that is for certain: No place outside is safe during a thunderstorm. This is why we always say, "When thunder roars, go indoors."
Sep 5, 2017 · Lightning illuminates the sky as Texas State warms up in Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, Fla., prior to an NCAA football game against Florida State on Sept. 5, 2015. The intensity of all the colors in lightning tends to saturate our eyes, leading us to perceive the color white.
- Overview
- Types of Lightning
- The Impact of a Lightning Strike
- 13 Striking Photographs of Natural Disasters
Contrary to the common expression, lightning can and often does strike the same place twice.
Lightning is an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves. Most lightning occurs within the clouds.
"Sheet lightning" describes a distant bolt that lights up an entire cloud base. Other visible bolts may appear as bead, ribbon, or rocket lightning.
During a storm, colliding particles of rain, ice, or snow inside storm clouds increase the imbalance between storm clouds and the ground, and often negatively charge the lower reaches of storm clouds. Objects on the ground, like steeples, trees, and the Earth itself, become positively charged—creating an imbalance that nature seeks to remedy by passing current between the two charges.
Lightning is extremely hot—a flash can heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface. This heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the pealing thunder we hear a short time after seeing a lightning flash.
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Cloud-to-ground lightning bolts are a common phenomenon—about 100 strike Earth’s surface every single second—yet their power is extraordinary. Each bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity.
A typical cloud-to-ground lightning bolt begins when a step-like series of negative charges, called a stepped leader, races downward from the bottom of a storm cloud toward the Earth along a channel at about 200,000 mph (300,000 kph). Each of these segments is about 150 feet (46 meters) long.
When the lowermost step comes within 150 feet (46 meters) of a positively charged object, it is met by a climbing surge of positive electricity, called a streamer, which can rise up through a building, a tree, or even a person.
When the two connect, an electrical current flows as negative charges fly down the channel towards earth and a visible flash of lightning streaks upward at some 200,000,000 mph (300,000,000 kph), transferring electricity as lightning in the process.
Some types of lightning, including the most common types, never leave the clouds but travel between differently charged areas within or between clouds. Other rare forms can be sparked by extreme forest fires, volcanic eruptions, and snowstorms. Ball lightning, a small, charged sphere that floats, glows, and bounces along oblivious to the laws of gravity or physics, still puzzles scientists.
About one to 20 cloud-to-ground lightning bolts is "positive lightning," a type that originates in the positively charged tops of stormclouds. These strikes reverse the charge flow of typical lightning bolts and are far stronger and more destructive. Positive lightning can stretch across the sky and strike "out of the blue" more than 10 miles from the storm cloud where it was born.
Lightning is not only spectacular, it’s dangerous. About 2,000 people are killed worldwide by lightning each year. Hundreds more survive strikes but suffer from a variety of lasting symptoms, including memory loss, dizziness, weakness, numbness, and other life-altering ailments. Strikes can cause cardiac arrest and severe burns, but 9 of every 10 people survive. The average American has about a 1 in 5,000 chance of being struck by lightning during a lifetime.
Lightning's extreme heat will vaporize the water inside a tree, creating steam that may blow the tree apart. Cars are havens from lightning—but not for the reason that most believe. Tires conduct current, as do metal frames that carry a charge harmlessly to the ground.
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A supercell thunderstorm strikes in South Dakota. Among the most severe storms, supercells can bring strong winds, hail, and even tornadoes. ( See more extreme weather pictures .)
Lightning Strikes
A supercell thunderstorm strikes in South Dakota. Among the most severe storms, supercells can bring strong winds, hail, and even tornadoes. (See more extreme weather pictures.)
Photograph by Jim Reed, National Geographic
- 3 min
Dec 2, 2023 · The intrinsic color of lightning in almost all of those cases is a white or bright bluish-white similar to most other sparks passing through air.
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Aug 12, 2022 · In fact, a study published Monday by Washington State University researchers found that so-called “dry lightning,” when lightning occurs alongside less than 2.5 millimeters of rainfall, is now...
