The air around you is humid, moist, and feels thick as a breeze blows across your lawn. Eyes avert to the seemingly endless mass of gray clouds that loom above you; and the first flash streaks across the sky. The powerful blast of light and heat energy striking the ground a few miles away, accompanied by a loud clap of thunder. Then the first drop falls from the sky, and they are soon accompanied by millions of other cold, hard liquid beads.
Lightning is a powerful phenomenon that only occurs in thunderstorms, some forms of lightning are more dangerous than others. Read on and find out things you may not have known about until now.
You want to know how lightning forms? It is created when people wearing wool socks rub their feet on the carpet for a long period of time. Its true you know, the moose said so. What, you don’t believe me? Ok then, if you don’t believe that, then maybe you’ll believe me if I told you something else. How about this? Lightning only forms in cumulonimbus clouds, you know, the big, puffy ones? They act like giant storehouses of energy, containing both positive and negative charges. (Where the charges are located determines the type of lightening that will appear next.)
Positive charges are usually found at the top of the cloud, and the negative ones at the bottom. Some charges are also found close to the ground. In any case, as the storm develops, the charges build up, until the two charges meet in between the two regions and fuse together. When the cloud can no longer contain the vast amount of electrical charges, it releases them in either single or multiple blasts of light and heat energy; and all of this happens within a few seconds!
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What? Need a more scientific explanation? Well, according to http://www.educ.uvic.ca/Faculty/mroth/438/LIGHTENING/JASONS/Formation2.html “The production of a lightning bolt begins when the negative charge on the bottom of the cloud gets large enough to overcome air’s resistance to the flow of electricity and electrons begin flowing toward the earth along a zigzag, forked path at about 60 miles per second. This discharge is called a leader and it moves directly towards the ground. As the electrons flow downward, they collide with air molecules, producing more free electrons.” Is that good enough for you? I hope so, because I can’t find a better explanation than that! Some things, the web site knew that I didn’t know
So you know how lightning forms, but do you know what the loud thunderclap is that follows? You don’t, really? It’s old men bellowing into the wind. Just kidding! That sound is the rapid compression and expansion of air molecules when lightening strikes. You see, lightning can heat the air around it to 43,000 degrees or more, causing the air molecules to expand rapidly. The air then cools quickly, compressing the molecules again, this pattern continues in an ongoing cycle for the few milliseconds that lightening is around. This creates powerful sound waves that can be heard for miles; cool huh?
Many people ask one question though; why dose thunder sound the way it dose? It’s because lightning is jagged and uneven, causing jumbled noise from the heated air. It also sounds different depending on how close or far you are from the place where lightning has struck, and based on what type of discharge it is (cloud to ground, cloud to cloud, etc…).
So now you know what lightning is, how it forms, and what the thunderclap is; but did you know that there are different types of lightning? Some of which are more dangerous than others, and some that no one can explain. Its true, some forms of lightning have never been photographed, for some, photos are rare, and others, they are as common as everyday life.
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The most common type of lightning is cloud to ground. They appear to be “forked” and always seem to shoot from the clouds to the ground, hence the name. Yet, according to http://www.usatoday.com/weather/tg/wflash/wflash2.htm “Only about 20% of all discharges are cloud to ground. Occasionally these strike up to 10 miles away from a thunderstorm.” Cloud to ground lightning is also the most dangerous type, while some people are struck and live to tell about it, others aren’t so lucky and end up, shall we say, medium rare or well done.
Cloud air is slightly less common, and less dangerous than cloud to ground. This lightning type occurs when a positively charged cloud reached out to air around it, which contains negative charges. Much of the time, only one good bolt of lightning necessary to equalize the charge difference between the clouds, and air.
Cloud to cloud lightning has to be the least dangerous; it is also a semi rare type. This happens when a discharge occurs between two or more separate storm clouds. Sometimes, people think that it is a single bolt of lightening that appears to light up the sky, which could be true in some situations. When a discharge is shared by more than two clouds several bolts may be present at once, causing the energy to fan out over a greater area than one bolt could do on it’s own.
What if I told you that lightning could take shape, besides a jagged line? Would you believe me? Well if you do or don’t, doesn’t really matter to me, but it’s true! Lightning can take the shape of a ball; but this rare phenomenon doesn’t happen very often, and it has never been photographed! The energy spheres have an average range in size, from as big as a beach ball, to as small as your fist.
Sure there are pictures of what people have seen, but they aren’t real, they’re just there to give people a general idea about what ball lightning looks like.
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Ball lightning isn’t dangerous at all. Yes, yes, you’re probably wondering how a ball of electricity can’t be dangerous. Well the truth is, no one knows for sure! It can fly, hover, or float, and has even been reported to bounce down the street! It can be stationary one second, fast moving another, and slow moving the next. It can be silent, or it could make a crackling sound that drives you nuts after a while, or even hiss!
Unlike regular lightning bolts that last only a few seconds, ball lightning can last for a few seconds or a few minutes, disappearing without a peep or with a big bang, slowly, or in the blink of an eye.
No one is quite sure about how much power is packed in this mystery ball, but ball lightening has been reported to melt down glass and other materials, melt, not burn or scorch. At the same time as this strange energy has melted down some things, people who have gotten into close encounters with ball lightening have never felt any heat radiating from the odd sphere.
Ball lightning still puzzles scientists today, as they try to unravel the mystery of how such a phenomenon could exist. How dose it maintain its shape? How much energy dose it contain? No one knows for sure, but hopefully these and more questions will be answered.
So, you hear the thunder, but miss the lightening, can you tell what type of lightening it was by the thunder it generated? Of course you can! Lightning types can almost always be told apart by what the thunder sounded like, because each type makes a different sound wave.
Intra cloud lightning usually has a soft, low, rumble of thunder. It can be soothing and calm, not loud and frightening like cloud to ground strikes. This is because cloud to ground is far more powerful than intra cloud lightning, therefore cloud to ground can produce more heat energy.
So, when lightning strikes the ground it doesn’t leave a mark, right? Wrong! When lightning comes in contact with the ground, you can find the exact spot where it hit. The powerful blast leaves a scorch mark on the ground along with something called a fulgurite.
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Fulgurite is created when the heat from a lightning bolt heats the ground to a point where it melts. When it cools down again, it turns into glass; a glass tube to be exact! This tube is in the exact shape of the lightning bolt itself and can be found wherever lightning has struck, except for in deep water of course.
Fulgurite can be found in sand, rock, and other soils. They also come in a variety of colors, depending on how powerful the lightning bolt was, and what it hit.
Some of this unique glass has been found buried deep in the earth, the oldest sample dating back about 250 million years!
The average diameters of fulgurite ranges from 7 to 15 millimeters. I’m not sure on the lengths though.
Well, you’ve done it; you’ve squeezed out every bit of information that I could possibly hold. Yet there is still more to this magnificent force of nature.
Beyond ball lightning and fulgurite, there’s a world of mystery that has yet to be discovered by scientists and researchers who continue to unravel the lightning’s story, but just like tornadoes, they could continue to baffle people for years to come.
