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Jul 28, 2014 · Research by Nasa, external shows lightning is more likely to hit land than sea and that it is rare for strikes to occur in deep ocean areas. Waters just off coasts are more often affected.
- The Speed of Lightning
- When Lightning Strikes A Beach
- The Most Lightning-Struck Location in The World
- Helicopters Cause Lightning
- 1,400,000,000 Strikes Every Year
- Lightning Destroys Trees
- But It Can Help Plants Grow
- The Width of A Thumb and Hotter Than The Sun
- Volcanic Lightning
- Counting Lightning
While the flashes we see as a result of a lightning strike travel at the speed of light (670,000,000 mph) an actual lightning strike travels at a comparatively gentle 270,000 mph. This means it would take about 55 minutes to travel to the moon, or around 1.5 seconds to get from London to Bristol.
When lightning strikes sand or sandy soil, it fuses together the grains to create a small glass-like tube known as a fulgurite. They are not only prized by collectors, they are also of great scientific value in demonstrating past occurrence of lightning storms.
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela is the place on Earth that receives the most lightning strikes. Massive thunderstorms occur on 140-160 nights per year with an average of 28 lightning strikes per minute lasting up to 10 hours at a time. That's as many as 40,000 lightning strikes in one night!
Recent research from the Met Office revealed that helicopters can cause an isolated lightning strike. While flying, the helicopter acquires a negative charge, so if it flies close to an area that is positively charged (e.g. hail or a positively charged part of a cumulonimbus cloud) it can trigger a lightning strike.
Lightning is one of nature's most recurrent and common spectacles. Around the world, there are over 3,000,000 flashes every day. That's around 44 strikes every second.
Trees can often be destroyed by lightning strikes. When lightning hits a tree, it usually travels just below the tree's bark where there is a layer of sap and water. This layer becomes instantly heated and expands causing the bark to be blasted off the tree and sometimes splitting the wood.
While nitrogen is in the air all around us, for plants to be able to absorb it (a process vital for their growth) they rely on a process called Nitrogen fixation. Although much of this process is done by bacteria and algae, the extreme heat of a lightning strike causes nitrogen to bond with oxygen to create nitrogen oxides which combine with moistu...
While the intensity of a lightning strike can make them appear as thick bolts across the sky, the actual width of a lightning bolt is only about 2-3 cm. The average length of a lightning bolt is about 2-3 miles. The charge carried down this small channel is so intense that the temperature of the lightning reaches 30,000 °C - that's five times hotte...
While lightning storms are impressive in their own right, they don't quite compare to the spectacle when volcanic eruptions trigger lightning strikes. When an eruption occurs, earth and ash are thrown into the air in a giant plume, colliding to create an electrical charge. In the same way as normal lightning, the imbalance between the plume's elect...
To tell how far away a thunderstorm is, simply count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the boom of thunder that follows. Divide this number by five and this tells you how many miles away you are from the storm (or divide by three for the distance in kilometres).
Mar 17, 2021 · A new study published in Nature Communications suggests lightning may have been a key component in making phosphorus available for organisms to use when life on Earth first appeared by about 3.5...
Lightning primarily occurs when warm air is mixed with colder air masses, resulting in atmospheric disturbances necessary for polarizing the atmosphere. Lightning can also occur during dust storms, forest fires, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and even in the cold of winter, where the lightning is known as thundersnow.
Lightning doesn’t strike the ocean as much as land, but when it does,it spreads out over the water, which acts as a conductor. It can hit boats that are nearby, and electrocute fish that are near the surface. If you’re at the beach and hear thunder or see lightning, get out of the water.
A typical cloud-to-ground lightning bolt begins when a step-like series of negative charges, called a stepped leader, races downward from the bottom of a storm cloud toward the Earth along a...
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Oct 19, 2023 · Lightning is very, very hot—hotter than the surface of the sun. It can reach 28,000 degrees Celsius (50,000 degrees Fahrenheit). Lightning is more likely to strike objects that stick up off of the ground, including people.
