A typical stroke of lightning stretches as long as eight miles, and forms when a negatively charged region in a storm cloud begins to send out a stepped leader. This leader is met by another leader rising from the earth, allowing the cloud to discharge to the ground, reducing the negative electrical charge. That's typically [...]

"One one-thousand, two one-thousand…" Counting the time between a flash of lightning has long been a popular way to figure out how far away a lightning flash is. Even today, some people still recommend this method to determine if you're safe from a direct strike, though this is something of a fallacy–thunder isn't audible very [...]

Lightning, when you get right down to it, is essentially nothing but static electricity on a grand scale. Rising water vapor condenses into droplets or tiny ice crystals, which acquire a static electric charge as they pass through the air. This mechanism is responsible for all the forms of lightning found in thunderstorms–cloud to cloud [...]