Dangerous Power of Nature : Spectacular Lightning Strike

Check Out Best Photos Showing Spectacular Lightning Strike

Lightning strikes are electrical discharges on a massive scale between the atmosphere and an earth-bound object. They mostly originate in thunderclouds and terminate on the ground, called Cloud to Ground (CG) lightning. However, upward propagating lightning may also be initiated from a very tall grounded object and reach into the clouds.

Although "a lightning strike" is commonly used to describe all lightning, it is rather erroneous and a misnomer, as only about 25% of all lightning events worldwide are CG. The large bulk of lightning events are Intracloud (IC) or Cloud to Cloud (CC), where discharges only occur high in the atmosphere. Some lightning strikes go from Ground to Cloud (GC).

The scientific name for the complete process of a single lightning event is "flash". A flash is a very complex, multi-stage process, some parts of which are not fully understood. Most CG flashes only "strike" one physical location, referred to as a termination. The primary conducting channel, the bright coursing light you may see and call a "strike", is only about one inch in diameter, but because of its extreme brilliance, it often looks much larger to our eyes or in photographs. Lightning discharges are typically miles long, but certain types of horizontal discharges can be upwards of tens of miles in length. The entire flash lasts only a fraction of a second. Most of the early formative and propagation stages are much dimmer and not visible to the human eye.

Thunder is always produced by lightning, but very distant lightning may be seen but not heard. Lightning cannot happen in a vacuum devoid of ions, nor can thunder occur without molecules to vibrate.