Bolt from the blue: A positive lightning bolt which originates within the updraft of the storm, typically 2/3rds of the way up,
travels horizontally for many miles
, then strikes the ground.
Is lightning directional?
The answer is both.
Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up
. A typical cloud-to-ground flash lowers a path of negative electricity (that we cannot see) towards the ground in a series of spurts.
What does a horizontal lightning mean?
When the voltage is between the cloud and the ground, the lightning flash moves toward the ground in order to discharge that potential.
When the voltage is between one part of a cloud and another
, it moves in that direction, which can be horizontal.
What are the four types of lightning?
- Cloud-to-Ground (CG) Lightning. …
- Negative Cloud-to-Ground (-CG) Lightning. …
- Positive Cloud-to-Ground (+CG) Lightning. …
- Cloud-to-Cloud (CC) Lightning. …
- Intra-Cloud Lightning. …
- Ball Lightning.
What happens if lightning hits your house?
Lightning
can cause serious damage
if it strikes your home. The risk of fire is very high; lightning commonly ignites flammable material in and outside of buildings. Strikes can cause fires directly, or materials can ignite when current passes through them and heats them to the point of ignition.
Does thunder always follow lightning?
Thunder always follows lightning
. A lightning bolt heats the air through which it passes — a tube of air perhaps a half inch in diameter — to at least 50,000 degrees. The sudden heating followed by rapid cooling sets up an expansion-contraction sequence that generates atmospheric waves that we hear as thunder.
What is the rarest type of lightning?
ball lightning, also called globe lightning, a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning.
What are the 3 types of lightning?
There are three common types of lightning:
cloud to ground, cloud to cloud and cloud to air
. Cloud to ground lightning is the most dangerous. The ground is mainly consisted of positively charged particles while the bottom of violent storm clouds have negative charged particles.
What is the rarest color of lightning?
Green lightning
is a rare phenomenon that can be seen during a thunderstorm. Someone who has seen green lightning is extremely lucky as green lightning strikes are rarely seen. It is so rare that the only photograph of a green lightning strike is one from when the Chaiten volcano in Chile erupted.
Can lightning travel through the ground?
An indirect lightning strike can happen two different ways. The first way is through a ground current
. These occur when lightning strikes an object or the ground and the electricity travels through the ground until it encounters another object. The second way is through a side flash.
Can there be lightning without rain?
Dry thunderstorm refers to thunder and lightning that occur without bringing rain to the ground
. In fact, the thunder-bearing clouds do produce rain but the rain droplets have evaporated in the air before reaching the ground.
Can lightning strike the ocean?
“
Lightning doesn't strike the ocean as much as land
,” NOAA said. “But when it does, it spreads out over the water, which acts as a conductor. It can hit boats that are nearby, and electrocute fish that are near the surface.”
Can lightning travel upwards?
Ground-to-cloud lightning: upward-moving
Unlike cloud-to-ground lightning which starts inside the thunderstorm,
a ground-to-cloud lightning flash begins from a tall ground-based object and moves upward
. This type of lightning is common with strikes to towers and skyscrapers: read more.
Is Red lightning real?
Red lightning doesn't exist in the literal sense
, according to the National Weather Service. The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says.
What is dark lightning?
Dark lightning is
a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules
. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
Can lightning strike a car?
According to NBC 12,
a lightning bolt is so powerful that it could actually go through the tires and melt them
. In reality, it's the car's metal cage that protects the occupants, not the tires. Of course, that might not make sense at first, considering metal is a good conductor of electricity.
What happens if lightning strikes water?
When lightning strikes,
most of electrical discharge occurs near the water's surface
. Most fish swim below the surface and are unaffected. Although scientists don't know exactly just how deep the lightning discharge reaches in water, it's very dangerous to be swimming or boating during a thunderstorm.
Why is lightning so loud?
It's because
the amount of electrical energy that flows from the cloud to the ground is so enormous
: it's like a very big waterfall of electricity. The louder the sound that you hear, the closer you are to the lightning. Light travels through air much faster than sound.
What does it mean when lightning keeps flashing?
Understanding Lightning:
Continuing Current/Hot Lightning
Flashes which contain both return strokes and continuing current are also common. These flashes will flicker, leaders/return strokes, and also have short periods of constant illumination, continuing current.
How fast can lightning travel?
While the flashes we see as a result of a lightning strike travel at the speed of light (670,000,000 mph) an actual lightning strike travels at a comparatively gentle
270,000 mph
.
Can lightning silent?
Silent lightning, otherwise known as heat lightning, is when lightning occurs but is not followed by the expected roll of thunder
. When lightning is silent it is likely that it comes from a distant thunderstorm that is too far away for people to hear any noise.
Is there Black lightning?
Dark Lightning
These terrestrial gamma rays flashes, or TGFs, are among the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth, according to NASA. They're so powerful that they can blind satellite sensors hundreds of miles away.
Is Green lightning real?
Although green lightning seems unusual,
Few now suspects it occurs during all thunderstorms but is concealed inside clouds
. The concealment results from the structure of storm clouds. On the inside, the clouds contain ice crystals that are either positively or negatively charged.
What colors Can lightning be?
Lightning comes in every color of the rainbow (
Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Violet
, to name a few). It's almost always white, but often it's tinged with another color around the edges. The three most common colors, aside from white, are blue, yellow, and violet.
Is lightning hotter than the sun?
In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (
5 times hotter than the surface of the sun
). When lightning strikes a tree, the heat vaporizes any water in its path possibly causing the tree to explode or a strip of bark to be blown off.
What does Ball Lightning look like?
Ball lightning, according to observers, manifests as
a bright hissing orb of lightning ranging from 1 to 100 centimeters in diameter
that appears during thunderstorms, often levitating above the ground and moving regardless of wind intensity or direction.
What name means lightning?
- 1.Aashni (Hindi Origin) one of the female names that mean “lightning”
- 2.Adhira (Sanskrit Origin) meaning “divine white lightning”
- 3.Damini (Hindi Origin) meaning “lightning”
- Elektra (Greek Origin) means “amber” or “incandescent”. …
- 5.Kaminari (Japanese Origin) word for “thunder”
