![]() And this is what causes the most brilliant part of a lightning strike. Positively charged particles on the ground react to the incoming negatively charged particles and zip upward from the ground to meet them. (And when I say some, I mean compared to the illumination that’s about to come.) What you see below is downward-moving cloud-to-ground lightning, which is the typical forked lightning you’re familiar with:Īs near as I can gather, the bright forks of lightning you see heading downwards are simply negatively charged particles that produce some visible light. The latter strikes up, but the former does indeed move downward. Storm Highway clarifies that there are two types of lightning that strikes between the clouds and the ground: cloud-to-ground lightning and ground-to-cloud lightning. I would suggest that you check out their page. So I found Storm Highway, which offers a few very helpful animations to explain what’s going on. The NSSL adds that because this all happens so fast-in fact, in only about a millionth of a second-the human eye can’t possibly catch the entire thing, and we just perceive a lighting strike appearing, not zipping up or down.īut after watching that video, I would beg to differ. When the negatively charged particles from the atmosphere and the positively charged particles from the ground meet, something called a return stroke zips back up to the sky, and this is what causes the visible flash. The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) says that lightning that strikes the ground is known as cloud-to-ground lightning, and gets its name from the invisible charged particles that shoot down to the ground before the visible lightning strike.īecause the Earth’s atmosphere is negatively charged and the ground has a positive charge, and opposites attract, positively charged particles race up from the ground. You know, if I’m perfectly honest, it looks like it’s striking down to me.
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