Why Lighting Happens During A Thunderstorm
Below is a MRR and PLR article in category Reference Education -> subcategory Weather.
Why Lightning Occurs During Thunderstorms
Overview
Thunderstorms are dramatic displays of nature’s power, featuring electrical discharges, loud thunder, heavy rain, hail, and occasionally snow. Roughly 40,000 thunderstorms occur globally each day, predominantly in the equatorial regions and in the United States, especially in the Midwest and South.
Causes of Thunderstorms
Three primary factors contribute to the formation of thunderstorms: moisture, unstable climate, and air lift. Thunderstorms develop through three distinct stages:
1. Cumulus Stage: Warm, moist air rises and replaces colder air, driven by convection, frontal clashes, or orographic lift. This rising air cools and forms cumulus clouds, with condensation fueling further convection.
2. Mature Stage: As rising air reaches the tropopause, the clouds spread out, forming the characteristic anvil shape. In severe storms, powerful updrafts can extend into the stratosphere. Inside the clouds, water droplets merge into raindrops or ice particles. Strong updrafts can create larger ice particles, leading to hail.
3. Dissipating Stage: The storm eventually loses its intensity as the supply of warm, moist air decreases.
Lightning and Thunder
When electrical charges build up within a thunderstorm, lightning occurs. These charged particles emit bright light and create an electrical current that superheats the air, producing the roaring sounds of thunder.
Formation of Lightning
The exact process of how electrical discharges generate thunder is not fully understood. However, it is widely believed that the precipitation within cumulus clouds becomes polarized. Ice crystals and water droplets moving through the Earth's electric field acquire positive and negative charges, with positive charges rising and negative charges accumulating at the cloud base.
When these oppositely charged particles build up enough energy, an electrical discharge occurs, either within the cloud, between clouds, or from the cloud to the ground. Approximately one in four discharges reach the Earth, and lightning bolts can travel at speeds of 60,000 miles per hour.
Types of Lightning
Around 95% of lightning is negatively charged, originating from negatively charged particles in the cloud. The remaining 5% is positively charged, traveling downward to meet the negatively charged ground. Discovered in the 1970s, positive lightning is 6 to 10 times more potent than negative and poses significant risks to people and technology.
Thunder
Thunder is formed when a lightning bolt heats the surrounding air, causing it to expand rapidly and then contract. Since sound travels slower than light, we can estimate the distance of a lightning strike by timing the interval between seeing the flash and hearing the thunder. Sound travels about one mile in five seconds, so lightning more than 20 miles away is often not heard.
In summary, thunderstorms are complex meteorological phenomena rooted in the interaction of moisture, air currents, and electrical charges, resulting in the awe-inspiring events of lightning and thunder.
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