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The reverse happens in a positive CG flash, where electrons travel upward along the lightning channel, while also a positive charge is transferred downward to the ground (conventionally speaking this would be the opposite). Positive lightning is less common than negative lightning and on average makes up less than 5% of all lightning strikes. [8]
Sheet lightning is cloud-to-cloud lightning that exhibits a diffuse brightening of the surface of a cloud, caused by the actual discharge path being hidden or too far away. The lightning itself cannot be seen by the spectator, so it appears as only a flash, or a sheet of light. The lightning may be too far away to discern individual flashes.
The graphic above explains how positive and negative charges within clouds and between clouds and the ground create lightning strikes (AccuWeather). Essentially, lightning occurs due to the ...
Although the internal charge within the specimen is negative, the discharge is initiated from the positively charged exterior surfaces of the specimen, so that the resulting discharge creates a positive Lichtenberg figure. These objects are sometimes called electron trees, beam trees, or lightning trees.
The longest known lightning events have been given world-record status by the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, in a recently published study. Study: World-record lightning flash was ...
Hoffert (1888) identified individual lightning downward strokes using early cameras. [10] Elster and Geitel, who also worked on thermionic emission, proposed a theory to explain thunderstorms' electrical structure (1885) and, later, discovered atmospheric radioactivity (1899) from the existence of positive and negative ions in the atmosphere. [11]
When a sufficiently large positive lightning strike carries charges to the ground, the cloud top is left with a strongly negative net charge. This can be modeled as a quasi-static electric dipole and for less than 10 milliseconds a strong electric field is generated in the region above the thunderstorm.
The flash of a lightning strike and resulting thunder occur at roughly the same time. But light travels 300,000 km/sec, almost a million times the speed of sound. Sound travels at the slower speed of about 340 m/sec (depending on the temperature), so the flash of lightning is seen before thunder is heard. A method to determine the distance ...