Lightning

How Lightning Forms

To put it simply, lightning is electricity. It forms in the strong up-and-down air currents inside tall dark cumulonimbus clouds as water droplets, hail, and ice crystals collide with one another. Scientists believe that these collisions build up charges of electricity in a cloud. The positive and negative electrical charges in the cloud separate from one another, the negative chares dropping the lower part of the cloud and the positive charges staying in the middle and upper parts. Positive electrical charges also build upon the ground below. When the difference in the charges becomes large enough, a flow one cloud to another cloud. In typical lightning these are down-flowing negative charges, and when the positive charge3s on the ground leap upward to meet them, the jagged downward path of the negative charges suddenly lights up with a brilliant flash of light. Because of this, our eyes fool us into thinking that the lightning bolt shoots down from the cloud, when in fact the lightning travels up from the ground. In some cases, positive charges come to the ground from severe thunderstorms or from the anvil at the very top of a thunderstorm cloud. The whole process takes less than a millionth of a second.

Recent research from Vaisala-GAI’s LDAR and LDAR II lightning detection networks show that lightning can travel 60miles or more. They find the longest bolts originate  in the front of a squall line and travel 62 miles horizontally back into the trailing stratiform region behind the squall line. Kinds of Lightning. There are various kind of lightning. Here are some of them.

In-Cloud Lightning: The most common type, is travels between positive and negative charge centers within the thunderstorm.

Cloud-to-Cloud Lightning: A rare event, it is lightning that travels from one cloud to another. Sheet Lightning: This is lightning within a cloud that lights up the cloud like a sheet of light Ribbon Lightning: This is when a cloud-to-ground flash is blown sideways by the wind, making it appear as two identical bolts side by side.

Bead Lightning: Also called “this is when the lightning” bolt appears to be broken into fragments because of varying brightness or because parts of the bolt are covered by clouds.

Ball Lightning : Rarely seen, this is lightning in the form of a grapefruit-sized ball, which lasts only a few seconds. Bolt from the blue: Alightning bolt from a distant thunderstorm, seeming to come out of the clear blue sky, but really from the top or edge of a thunderstorm a few miles away. Lightning facts
Science

Please click here you can know health information from my web site.