Lighting is one of the first signs of a monsoon storm. To put lighting into perspective, it’s five times hotter than the surface of the sun, making it 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lightning is simply electricity. It forms in the up and down air currents inside cumulonimbus clouds when water droplets, hail and ice crystals collide with one another.
The positive and negative electrical charges in the cloud separate from one another. The negative charge drops to the bottom while the positive charge stays in the middle and upper parts of the cloud.
Our ground is almost filled with a positive charge. Lighting is the result of the build-up and discharge of electrical energy between the positive and negative charged areas. In other words, opposites attract.
Very few lighting strikes will actually make it down to the ground. Strikes usually occur within a single cloud or from one cloud to another. Only about 20 percent of all lightning strikes will hit the ground.
Even though lightning is one of Mother Nature’s most powerful weapons, it’s incredibly lazy. Lightning wants to strike whatever closest to it. It’s common to think lightning will strike a metal object before it hits anything else, but that’s not true.
It just so happens that most of our tallest objects are metal, like telephone poles, towers on top of buildings and transformers. However, lightning will not specifically seek out metal objects. Metal just serves as a good conductor.
