Flashing Lightning
Last week we learned about tornadoes. Another element of storms that you might notice — and it’s hard not to since it lights up the sky — is lightning. The Mini Page takes a look at lightning this week.
Formation
Lightning is a strong blast of electricity that occurs in a flash of a second during a thunderstorm. It’s basically a large electrical spark that starts in the sky.
A bolt of lightning can be 5 miles long! Since light travels faster than sound, you might notice that you’ll see a flash of lightning before you hear the thunder that accompanies a storm.
Among the factors that make lightning visible are dust and moisture.
Did you know lightning bolts often appear white, but based on atmospheric conditions, we can also see them as blue, violet, red, orange, green or yellow.
Distance
Sometimes people count the seconds between a flash of lightning and a boom of thunder to determine how far a storm is from their location. If you divide the number of seconds you count between the flash and thunder by 5, some say you’ll get an estimate of how many miles the storm is from you.
Power
According to the National Weather Service, the average flash of lightning is about 300 million volts and 30,000 amps. To give you an idea of how powerful that is, one flash of lightning could power a 100-watt lightbulb for three months.
Fast facts
The location that is struck by lightning the most is Lake
Maracaibo in Venezuela.
Residents there can see as many as
40,000 lightning strikes per night.
There are more than 3 million flashes of lightning around the world every day. That’s 44 strikes every second!
During the 1700s, people believed that ringing church bells would drive off lightning. During storms, bell ringers would go to work, ringing their bells until the lightning and thunder stopped.
The width of a lightning bolt is only 2 to 3 centimeters! That’s about the size of a grape, penny, walnut or slice of banana.