The positive charges or protons form at the top of the cloud and the negative charges or electrons form at the bottom of the cloud. Since opposites attract, that causes a positive charge to build up on the ground beneath the cloud.
The grounds electrical charge concentrates around anything that sticks up, such as mountains, people, or single trees. The charge coming up from these points eventually connects with a charge reaching down from the clouds and - zap - lightning strikes!
Have you ever rubbed your feet across carpet and then touched a metal door handle? If so, then you know that you can get shocked! Lightning works in the same way. Click Here to see where lightning is currently striking across the U. How hot is lightning? Lightning is approximately 54, degrees Fahrenheit. That is six times hotter than the surface of the sun! What color is lightning? Lightning seems to be clear or a white-yellow color, but it really depends on the background.
What causes thunder? Thunder is caused by lightning. When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it actually opens up a little hole in the air, called a channel. Once then light is gone the air collapses back in and creates a sound wave that we hear as thunder. The reason we see lightning before we hear thunder is because light travels faster than sound! How do you know if lightning is nearby? If you see dark clouds, then lightning could be present, but the best thing you can do is to listen for thunder.
If you hear thunder, then you need to go indoors or get in a car. Don't be outside, where lightning could strike! If your hair stands on end or your skin starts to tingle, lightning maybe about to strike. Get down on your hands and knees and keep your head tucked in. Do not lay flat, because it can give lightning a better chance of strike you.
How far away can you see lightning and hear thunder? Within those distant thunderstorms, the lightning bolts can be seen as much as miles from us, depending on the height of the bolt, the clarity of the air, and our elevation.
Thunder, in comparison, has a much shorter range of detection - usually less than 15 miles in a quiet rural setting and under 5 miles in a noisy city environment. Why are you less likely to see static electricity in the summer? In the summer, our dew points are much higher due to warm and humid air coming from the Gulf of Mexico and that is why we have humid weather.
In the winter, our dew points are much lower due to cold and direr air coming from Canada. The lower the dew point the better it is to create static electricity, so that's why you see it more in the winter. Where the ice going down meets the water coming up, electrons are stripped off. It's a little more complicated than that, but what results is a cloud with a negatively charged bottom and a positively charged top. These electrical fields become incredibly strong, with the atmosphere acting as an insulator between them in the cloud.
Lightning happens. The electric field "looks" for a doorknob. Sort of. It looks for the closest and easiest path to release its charge.
Often lightning occurs between clouds or inside a cloud. But the lightning we usually care about most is the lightning that goes from clouds to ground—because that's us! As the storm moves over the ground, the strong negative charge in the cloud attracts positive charges in the ground.
The actual breakdown process is still poorly understood. The air breakdown creates ions and free electrons that travel down the conducting channel. This current flow temporarily equalizes the charged regions in the atmosphere until the opposite charges build up again.
Lightning from thunderstorms begins in a strong electric field between opposite charges within the storm cloud, and can stay completely within the cloud intra-cloud lightning when the charge regions are similar strength balanced or can reach the ground cloud-to-ground lightning when one of the regions is much stronger than the other unbalanced. Lightning is one of the oldest observed natural phenomena on earth. It can be seen in volcanic eruptions, extremely intense forest fires pyrocumulonimbus clouds , surface nuclear detonations, heavy snowstorms, in large hurricanes, and obviously, thunderstorms.
Once the negative charge at the bottom of the cloud gets large enough, a flow of negative charge called a stepped leader rushes toward the Earth.
The positive charges at the ground are attracted to the stepped leader, so positive charge flows upward from the ground. When the stepped leader and the positive charge meet, a strong electric current carries positive charge up into the cloud. This electric current is known as the return stroke. We see it as the bright flash of a lightning bolt. Thunder and lightning occur at roughly the same time although you see the flash of lightning before you hear the thunder.
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