LIGHTNING

While I was driving back home, its was pouring, thunder and lightning were filling up the gray sky. This gave me the idea for my next post.

Lightnings always catches me by their "dance" in sky. It also always reminds me that mother nature is always in control. Lets look at some facts of this remarkable light display by nature.

• Caused by imbalance between positive and negative charges

During a storm, colliding particles of rain, ice, or snow increase this imbalance and often negatively charge the lower reaches of storm clouds

Objects on the ground, like steeples, trees, and the Earth itself, become positively charged

These negative charges, called a stepped leader, gathers at the bottom of a storm cloud toward the Earth and when this segments 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. 

The process forms a channel through which electricity is transferred as lightning.

Lightning is extremely hot reaching temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface. 30,000 °C (54,000 °F)

Travels up to speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph)

Earth is being stricken by a hundred lightning bolts every second.

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.

Types of lightning

• Cloud-to-ground lightning

This is the best known and second most common type of lightning.

• Bead lightning

It is relatively rare.

• Ribbon lightning

occurs in thunderstorms with high cross winds and multiple return strokes

• Staccato lightning

a short-duration stroke that appears as a single very bright flash

• Forked lightning

cloud-to-ground lightning that exhibits branching of its path.

• Heat lightning

a lightning flash that appears to produce no thunder

• Dry lightning

Volcanic material thrust high into the atmosphere can trigger lightning.

• Rocket lightning

It is a form of cloud discharge, generally horizontal and at cloud base

• Positive lightning

Positive lightning is a type of lightning strike that comes from apparently clear or only slightly cloudy skies

• Ball lightning

Ball lightning may be an atmospheric electrical phenomenon, the physical nature of which is still controversial.

• Upper-atmospheric lightning

Representation of upper-atmospheric lightning and electrical-discharge phenomena

• Sprites

Sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above a thunderstorm cloud, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes.

• Blue jets

Blue jets differ from sprites in that they project from the top of the cumulonimbus above a thunderstorm, typically in a narrow cone, to the lowest levels of the ionosphere 25 miles (40 km) to 50 miles (80 km) above the earth

• Elves

Elves often appear as dim, flattened, expanding glows around 250 miles (402 km) in diameter that last for, typically, just one millisecond.

• Triggered lightning

1. Rocket-triggered
2. Volcanically triggered 
3. Laser-triggered

Trigger lightning strikes by means of infrared or ultraviolet lasers

• Extraterrestrial lightning

 lightning has been observed within the atmospheres of other planets, such as Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. 

• Ground-to-cloud lightning

• Cloud-to-cloud lightning

• Sheet lightning

Creation of Lightning

(C) jeeknowsthis.blogspot.com/information from nationalgeography.com and wikipedia.com