Colorado Lightning Safety Awareness Week: The Science of Thunderstorms and Lightning
Colorado Lightning Safety Week continues through this Saturday. Today we discuss the science of lightning.
Every thunderstorm produces lightning. Lightning is a giant spark that
moves within the cloud, between clouds, or between the cloud and the
ground. As lightning passes through the air...it heats the air rapidly
to a temperature of about fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. This
causes a rapid expansion of the air near the lightning channel. This
rapid expansion causes a shock wave that we hear as thunder.