All You Need To Know About Lightning

    Lightning is an electrical discharge produced by thunderstorms that you can see visibly.  Different forms of lightning are cloud-to-ground, cloud-to-cloud, in-cloud, and cloud-to-air.  Other forms of lightning are ball lightning, heat lightning, and positive flash lightning, which are more rare.  Within a thunderstorm there are negative and positive charges.  As everyone knows, opposites attract.  Lightning is no different.  A negative charge is more likely to build up on the ground while a positive charge in the clouds.  The position of the electrical charge is also dependant on the water and ice particles. 

    These two strokes generally meet around 150 feet above the earth.  What we see as a single return stroke, traveling at about half the speed of light, may actually be several, also known as streak lightning.  This one path can be used many times in the matter of seconds and still look like one bolt.  The one we see most though is the forked lightning.  This is a lightning bolt that has branches off of it.  In one recorded instance the same track was used 47 times, thought to be the world record.  Because of this and the wind shifting the channel slightly it looks like lightning flickers, or is side by side. 

Out of the nine planets, six of them have lightning as well.  Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus, and Venus have lightning.  And out of these planets Jupiter is to have the strongest ones.  Apparently they are about 100 times more powerful then Earth's and can cause static on our radios.

    Now let's get onto thunder.  Thunder is the sound wave we hear after a lightning bolt.  It is caused from the expansion and heating of the air around a stroke.  If you are close enough you will hear a tearing followed by a sharp crack.  The tearing sound is from the leader, mention above, and the crack is from the return stroke.  Together this make thunder.  Thunder is heard after the lightning is seen because of the difference it takes for each to travel.  Light travels faster (about 186,000 miles per second) than sound (about 1,090 feet per second) does.  So you see the light almost instantaneously followed by the sound.  If you see lightning, count how many seconds between it and the thunder then divide by 5.  Approximately every 5 seconds is 1 mile away.