For every cloud-to-ground strike, there can be three to five cloud-to-cloud strikes. A single stroke of lightning can heat the air around it to 30,000°C. Another type of lightning occurs when some strokes actually emit from the ground into the sky. The strike or the propagation of charge occurs between Cloud to Ground (called Cloud to ground Lightning) , between two clouds (called Cloud to cloud Lightning), between two regions of a single cloud (called Intra cloud Lightning). Thunder occurs when energy from lightning heats and rapidly expands the air. About 70% of lightning occurs over land in the tropics where atmospheric convection is the greatest. While lightning and thunder occur at roughly the same time, lightning travels at the speed of light, or at 186,000 miles a second, while thunder travels at the speed of sound, equivalent to one-fifth of a mile in one second. Lightning rods and metallic conductors can be used to protect a structure by intercepting and diverting the lightning current into the ground as harmlessly as possible. Despite this, lightning inside a cloud or that goes cloud-to-cloud is the most common type of lightning. It creats a shockwave as the surrounding air is rapidly compressed. What is Lightning and How does it occurs? Lightning can occur between opposite charges within the thunderstorm cloud (intra-cloud lightning) or between opposite charges in the cloud and on the ground (cloud-to-ground lightning). On discharge, a highly electrically conductive plasma channel is created within the air, and when current flows within this channel, it rapidly heats the air up to about 25,000°C. This occurs from both the mixture of warmer and colder air … It will make a flash of lightning. This extreme heating causes the air to expand explosively fast. Most lightning occurs within the clouds. Lightning is an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves. The lightning channel is an example of terrestrial plasma in action. How thunder occurs? Lightning is an electrical discharge between a high amount of electrons at the bottom of a cloud and their resulting attraction of protons in objects in the ground. The resulting sound wave gets heard as thunder. The main bolt or stroke will go back up to the cloud. Or, a leader stroke can go from the cloud to another cloud. It is an electrical discharge of extremely high electricity. That’s 5 times the temperature of the surface of the Sun. Lightning is one of the oldest observed natural phenomena on earth. Facts about Lightning. It can go from the cloud to the ground. Lightning is a large-scale natural spark discharge that occurs within the atmosphere or between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. This type of lightning looks like a bright flicker in a cloud. The air then contracts rapidly as it … No one is sure why lightning bolts follow a zigzag path as they move. This lightning bolt of energy that is let out is called a leader stroke. Cloud-to-Cloud lightning occurs between two unique clouds, and Intra-Cloud lightning occurs within a single cloud. Lightning is a significant weather hazard and occurs at an average rate of 50 to 100 discharges per second worldwide.