Which way does lightning go?

Question

Does lightning go from sky to ground, or ground to sky? Different people are telling me different things. Thanks.

Answer 1

You are being told different things because the answer is all the above, plus one.
Lightning strikes can be cloud to ground, ground to cloud, or cloud to cloud.. Some strikes appear to have leaders that start at the cloud and the ground and meet in the middle.
The University of Florida has been doing lightning studies for several years and have some great pictures.

Answer 2

Well, it goes both ways. After the initial lightning leader of a cloud-to-ground event starts within the cloud above, it approaches the ground. As it does, an upward streamer emerges from the object about to be struck. When the two meet, this completes the path to ground, and the cloud is short-circuited with a brilliant, luminous 60,000 mile per second return stroke from the earth back up into the cloud. If the flash has more than one stroke, a dart leader emerges from the cloud and follows the same path (usually) to ground without branching, and as it approaches the object to be hit, another upward streamer emerges, resulting in the next return stroke. Occasionally the stepped leader originates at the ground (more likely from a tall building or tower), and moves upwards. The branching of the first stroke would then look like an upside down tree. This could also be considered true “upside down lightning.”

Answer 3

Which Way Does Lightning Strike

Answer 4

Well, I think that people are making this question far more complicated than is necessary... The thing to understand is that during a storm, electrons can build pretty much anywhere....

When electrons build to a critical point, they 'discharge' in order to equalize out again and the path they follow is wherever there is the least number of electron particles which can be in the ground, sky, etc.

The key thing to understand is electrons flow from where they've concentrated to areas of the least resistance... that is all.

Answer 5

I hate to disagree with some of these people, but it is not always sky to ground. Since electrons are very much lighter than protons, electricity always flows from a path of negative potential to a positive potential.

If the clouds are more negative than the Earth, electricity will flow from sky to ground. But on the other hand, if the clouds are more positive than ground, then current will flow from ground to sky.

Answer 6

ground to sky and sky to ground. if it is negativly charged in the sky and positivily charged on the gound then it will go sky to ground, and visa versa. negitave moves to be with positive. remeber what goes up, must come down. it is a balance kind of thing. so electral charges don't build up in the sky they move to the ground, and so too much dosen't build up in the earth it goes back up. so it is not all one way.

Answer 7

Any way they want:

1.Cloud to Ground.
2.Ground to Cloud.
3.Cloud to Cloud In every direction imaginable.
4.Believe it or not they might even 'Hover' in mid air. (Think of Aliens)
5.Move around. (Cloud to Cloud to Airplane to Cloud to Ground)
6.Space to Atmosphere (AWESOME and not ever recorded cause it's invisible)

I Hope when you say 'Lightning' you mean a charge of particles (usually static electrons) moving at an one direction to the closer 'positively' charged medium.

Answer 8

Lightening is a huger electrical charge; it happens when two charged clouds touch. So it almost always happen in the higher atmosphere and shoots down to earth. Like all electrical currents it will pick the shortest and easiest way way to discharge. That is why it is most likely to hit someone raising an umbrella with metal in it than the person next crouching to the ground. Or someone with a medal made of metal and not one close with no metal necklace. Many years ago I had the misfortune to witness lightening hit a German soccer player on the field shortly after a medal was ceremoniously put around his neck. Of all player on the field lightening went straight to the metal medal.

Answer 9

Towards the ground.

Answer 10

sky to ground. it always hits the ground. and should not strike 2 times at once or something like that.

Lightning. It avoids the ocean, but likes Florida. It's attracted to the Himalayas and even more so to central Africa. And lightning almost never strikes the north or south poles.

These are just a few of the things NASA scientists have learned using satellites to monitor worldwide lightning.

"For the first time, we've been able to map the global distribution of lightning, noting its variation as a function of latitude, longitude and time of year," says Hugh Christian, project leader for the National Space Science and Technology Center's (NSSTC's) lightning team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Left: A lightning bolt strikes the Atlantic Ocean near Florida. According to a new NASA map of global lightning rates, such strikes over open ocean waters are rare. Image courtesy NOAA.



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This new perspective on lightning is possible thanks to two satellite-based detectors: the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) and the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS). "The OTD and the LIS are two optical sensors that we've flown in lower Earth orbit," says Christian, whose team developed the sensors. "The OTD was launched in 1995 and we got five good years out of it. The LIS was launched on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite in 1997 and it's still going strong."

"Basically, these optical sensors use high-speed cameras to look for changes in the tops of clouds, changes your eyes can't see," he explains. By analyzing a narrow wavelength band around 777 nanometers -- which is in the near-infrared region of the spectrum -- they can spot brief lightning flashes even under daytime conditions.

Before OTD and LIS, global lightning patterns were known only approximately. Ground-based lightning detectors employing radio-frequency sensors provide high-quality local measurements. But because such sensors have a limited range, oceans and low-population areas had been poorly sampled. The development of space-based optical detectors was a major advance, giving researchers their first complete picture of planet-wide lightning activity.