How does a tunderstorm get its electricity for lightning?

Question

How does a tunderstorm get its electricity for lightning?

Answer 1

There are charged particles in the air.  When they have enough energy, they ground out and arc, which is the lightning you see.

Answer 2

Lightning is a massive natural electrostatic discharge produced during a thunderstorm. Lightning's abrupt electric discharge is accompanied by the emission of light. The electricity passing through the atmosphere rapidly heats and expands the air, producing lightning's characteristic thunder sound.

How Lightning is Formed

The first process in the generation of lightning generation is the separation of positive and negative charges within a cloud. Ice crystals inside cumulonimbus clouds rub against one another due to the strong updrafts in these clouds, thus building up a strong static charge.

Positively charged crystals tend to rise to the top causing the cloud top to build up a positive static charge and negatively charged crystals and hailstones drop to the middle and bottom layers of the cloud building up a negative static charge. Cumulonimbus clouds that do not produce enough ice crystals usually fail to produce enough static electricity to cause lightning.

Lightning can also occur as a result of volcanic eruptions or violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.

The second process is the build up of positive charges on the ground beneath the clouds. The Earth is normally negatively charged with respect to the atmosphere. But as the thunderstorm passes over the ground, the negative charges at the bottom of the cumulonimbus cloud cause the positive charges on the ground to gather along the surface for several miles around the storm and becomes concentrated in vertical objects including trees and tall buildings. If you feel your hair stand up on end in a lightning storm beware. The negative charges from the cloud are pulling the positive charges inside your body to the top of your head and you could be in danger of being struck.

The third process is the generation of the lightning. When sufficient negatives and positives gather in this way, an electrical discharge occurs within the clouds or between the clouds and the ground, producing the bolt.

Negative Lightning

A bolt of lightning usually begins when an invisible negatively charged stepped leader stroke is sent out from the cloud. As it does so, a positively charged streamer is sent out from the positively charged ground or cloud. When the leader and streamer meet, the electrical discharge takes place up the streamer into the cloud. This return stroke is the most luminous part of the strike, and the part that is really visible.

Most lightning strikes usually last about a quarter of a second. Sometimes several strokes will travel up and down the same leader strike, causing a flickering effect. Thunder is caused when the discharge rapidly super heats the air around the strike, causing a shock wave to be sent out.

Research published in 2002 indicates that every lighting bolt also causes a similar but weaker electrodynamic pulse in the mesosphere, located 50 to 80 km (31 to 53 miles) above the earth, and above into the thermosphere.

This type of lightning is known as negative lightning due to the discharge of negative charge from the cloud, and accounts for over 95% of all lightning.

Statistics: an average bolt of negative lightning carries a current of 30 kiloamperes, transfers a charge of 5 coulombs, has a potential difference of about 100 megavolts, and lasts a few milliseconds.

Answer 3

Lightening is owned by GE - It's a subsidiary ;)

Answer 4

It doesn't. Thunder is the sound that comes from the positive and negative electrons' friction that produce lightening. You'll notice that you hear thunder AFTER a lightening strike. Lightening contains the electricity, not its reverberating sound (thunder).