What is Lightning?

What exactly is lightning? How does it form? Why do some lightning storms feature gigantically imposing forks of electricity slicing through the air, and others a blanket, a sheet almost, of light?

It’s not hard to imagine why cultures around the world believed the source of lightning to be supernatural. The power of a lightening storm can be breathtaking, frightening, and awe-inspiring. Fulminology is the study of lightning, and while scientists may know what it is, they still debate about how and why it forms.

Lightning is defined as a massive atmospheric electrostatic discharge, which occurs when electricity suddenly flows between two objects in contact, in this case between two areas of electrically charged clouds. It temporarily equalises the charged regions. When a warm air mass mixes with a cold air mass, atmospheric disturbances are created which lead to regions within the clouds polarising and becoming positively or…