4 ms·

Can anyone give a simple explanation of why a lightning strike would travel so far laterally, rather than hitting the ground closer to wherever it started?

by abeppu 6y ago

blablabla123 6y ago
Maybe when there's a potential difference over a large area, getting regulated at once. In the picture it's more extending over an area than a length.
kwk1 6y ago
Just a guess, but normally lightning is caused by potential difference between the air and ground, so you roughly speaking have two potential surfaces/regions. For this to happen laterally, perhaps it would be enough to have three masses of air separated by two pressure fronts, with the interactions at the air masses' boundaries acting something like charge buildup across parallel plate capacitors. And then, dielectric breakdown happens.
redis_mlc 6y ago
I think the majority of lightning is cloud to cloud. The big events I've seen/felt were at Cape Canaveral (happens every year), but I also saw the Dec. 2019 storm in Jakarta, which was accompanied by tornados - this one was so intense that adults were scared for their lives, a real fireworks display. Both areas have tropical-level energy.
lostmyoldone 6y ago
Good question! I'm not entirely sure, but if we consider that: 1) Air is a decent insulator compared to earth 2) Most thunderstorms are quite close to the ground 3) The electric potential is caused by colliding masses of air. I would have to assume a large volume of air gets a bulk charge that is large in a specific direction but not large enough for a strike to the ground. Then you get a breakdown somewhere that connects a lower potential are to a higher potential area, and because there is a bulk charge, the breakdown simply continues after this initial connection. After that, I don't really get how it can continue for 16 seconds, other than massive amounts of charged in the atmosphere, and partially ionized leftover air from the initial blast being conductive enough to trigger more insulation breakdowns. You can use electron beams to charge acrylic which you then trigger to discharge by various means, and it seems to behave in a similar way but on a much smaller scale. Iirc the small lightning bolts inside the acrylic sometimes continue for a surprising amount of time, even though it's tiny, and the flash also (generally) occur entirely within the insulator even it it's quite long and thin.

Can anyone give a simple explanation of why a lightning strike would travel so far laterally, rather than hitting the ground closer to wherever it started?

by abeppu 6y ago

Can anyone give a simple explanation of why a lightning strike would travel so far laterally, rather than hitting the ground closer to wherever it started?

blablabla123 6y ago

Maybe when there's a potential difference over a large area, getting regulated at once. In the picture it's more extending over an area than a length.

kwk1 6y ago

Just a guess, but normally lightning is caused by potential difference between the air and ground, so you roughly speaking have two potential surfaces/regions. For this to happen laterally, perhaps it would be enough to have three masses of air separated by two pressure fronts, with the interactions at the air masses' boundaries acting something like charge buildup across parallel plate capacitors. And then, dielectric breakdown happens.

redis_mlc 6y ago

I think the majority of lightning is cloud to cloud. The big events I've seen/felt were at Cape Canaveral (happens every year), but I also saw the Dec. 2019 storm in Jakarta, which was accompanied by tornados - this one was so intense that adults were scared for their lives, a real fireworks display. Both areas have tropical-level energy.

lostmyoldone 6y ago

Good question! I'm not entirely sure, but if we consider that: 1) Air is a decent insulator compared to earth 2) Most thunderstorms are quite close to the ground 3) The electric potential is caused by colliding masses of air. I would have to assume a large volume of air gets a bulk charge that is large in a specific direction but not large enough for a strike to the ground. Then you get a breakdown somewhere that connects a lower potential are to a higher potential area, and because there is a bulk charge, the breakdown simply continues after this initial connection. After that, I don't really get how it can continue for 16 seconds, other than massive amounts of charged in the atmosphere, and partially ionized leftover air from the initial blast being conductive enough to trigger more insulation breakdowns. You can use electron beams to charge acrylic which you then trigger to discharge by various means, and it seems to behave in a similar way but on a much smaller scale. Iirc the small lightning bolts inside the acrylic sometimes continue for a surprising amount of time, even though it's tiny, and the flash also (generally) occur entirely within the insulator even it it's quite long and thin.