how does thunder and lightning form?
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The cause of lightning is still somewhat mysterious.  The leading theories state that an interaction between updrafts, rain droplets, and ice crystals in a thunderstorm separates positive from negative charges, such that positive charges concentrate at the top of the cloud, and negative charges at the bottom.  This negative charge in the cloud base induces a positive charge in the ground; lightning is an attempt to equalize this charge.\n\nThunder is basically a kind of explosion of air; it's what happens when the air the lightning passes through is violently heated and expands.  The reason thunder takes several seconds is because we hear thunder produced all along the lightning channel, which may be some miles long.
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Thunder / lightning is caused when a cold front and a warm front come together.  More info on lightning can be found here:\nhttp://www.insuremyhouse.com/lightning.html
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an Electrical storm involves lightning.\nAnd lightning can travel at the speed of light.\nBecause it mostly is light.\n\nThunder is slower and goes at the speed of sound so we hear the thunder later.
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Thunderstorms form when significant condensation, resulting in the production of a wide range of water droplets and ice crystals, occurs in an atmosphere that is unstable and supports deep, rapid upward motion. This often occurs in the presence of three conditions: sufficient moisture accumulated in the lower atmosphere, reflected by high dewpoint temperatures; a significant fall in air temperature with increasing height, known as a steep lapse rate; and a force such as mechanical convergence along a cold front that will focus the lift.
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Sheet lightning goes from cloud to cloud.  Lightning is caused when electrical charge accumulates within clouds.  When fork lightning happens, the charge accumulated in a cloud is discharged to the ground.  When sheet lightning occurs, two different cloud masses accumulate opposite changers until they discharge.\n\nThe voltage required to discharged is directly related to the distance between objects and the dielectric constant of the medium (i.e. air).
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The first process in the generation of lightning is the forcible separation of positive and negative charge carriers within a cloud or air. The mechanism by which this happens is still the subject of research, but one widely accepted theory is the polarisation mechanism. This mechanism has two components: the first is that falling droplets of ice and rain become electrically polarised as they fall through the atmosphere's natural electric field, and the second is that colliding ice particles become charged by electrostatic induction. Once charged, by whatever mechanism, work is performed as the opposite charges are driven apart and energy is stored in the electric fields between them. The positively charged crystals tend to rise to the top, causing the cloud top to build up a positive charge, and the negatively charged crystals and hailstones drop to the middle and bottom layers of the cloud, building up a negative charge. Cloud-to-cloud lightning can appear at this point. Cloud-to-ground lightning is less common. Cumulonimbus clouds that do not produce enough ice crystals usually fail to produce enough charge separation to cause lightning.\n\nWhen sufficient negatives and positives gather in this way, and when the electric field becomes sufficiently strong, an electrical discharge occurs within the clouds or between the clouds and the ground, producing the bolt. It has been suggested by experimental evidence that these discharges are triggered by cosmic ray strikes which ionise atoms, releasing electrons that are accelerated by the electric fields, ionising other air molecules and making the air conductive by a runaway breakdown, then starting a lightning strike. During the strike, successive portions of air become conductive as the electrons and positive ions of air molecules are pulled away from each other and forced to flow in opposite directions (stepped channels called step leaders). The conductive filament grows in length. At the same time, electrical energy stored in the electric field flows radially inward into the conductive filament.\n\nWhen a charged step leader is near the ground, opposite charges appear on the ground and enhance the electric field. The electric field is higher on trees and tall buildings. If the electric field is strong enough, a discharge can initiate from the ground. This discharge starts as positive streamer and, if it develops as a positive leader, can eventually connect to the descending discharge from the cloud.\n\nLightning can also occur within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions[1],[2], or can be caused by violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.\n\nA 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 usually sent out from the positively charged ground or cloud. When the two leaders meet, the electric current greatly increases. The region of high current propagates back up the positive stepped leader into the cloud. This "return stroke" is the most luminous part of the strike, and is 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. This discharge rapidly superheats the leader channel, causing the air to expand rapidly and produce a shock wave heard as thunder.\n\nIt is possible for streamers to be sent out from several different objects simultaneously, with only one connecting with the leader and forming the discharge path. Photographs have been taken on which non-connected streamers are visible such as that shown on the right.\n\nThis type of lightning is known as negative lightning because of the discharge of negative charge from the cloud, and accounts for over 95% of all lightning.\n\nAn average bolt of negative lightning carries a current of 30 kiloamperes, transfe
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Lightning is an electrical connection between the ground and the sky, it can come from the ground or from the sky or from both at the same time and meet somewhere in between.
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The clouds form when air near the earth's surface is warmed, causing it to rise since warm air rises. Think of a marshmallow in a microwave; as the microwave heats the marshmallow it begins to expand. This is similar to most things, like air. When air heats up it expands and this expanding air has to go somewhere because it is taking up more space, just as the marshmallow does, so this expanding warm air rises. Well, as the air rises it is losing its heat and cooling. When things cool, they condense; think of the marshmallow again as it cools when you take it out of the microwave (it shrinks, or condenses). In a general sense, to give you a brief idea of how clouds form, when condensation occurs, clouds take shape; you must keep in mind, however, that there is much more involved in cloud formation, but this was just to get you thinking and give a place for the lightning to happen.\n\nThe tendency of charges within a cloud is to have positive charges gather toward the upper portion and negative charges in the bottom of the cloud. \nWhen the difference between these charges is great enough to overcome the air's natural insulation, which keeps these charges from mixing, a lightning flash can take place. This charge difference builds up to millions of volts before the stoke of lightning takes place. The lightning bolt actually happens because nature tries to maintain equilibrium, a state of balance between all things. This is why the lightning that you see is a discharge of energy in the form of electricity. \n\nyea..thats the scientific answer to why it strikes...hope u can undertand it....i got it in skool\n\nas for how far away it is\n\ni learned that it comes from the "eye" of the storm or the center, && after the lightning flashes, count mississippi & the number of seconds equals a rought amount of miles you are away from the "eye" of the storm\n\nhope that helps
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Thunder is the explosive sound produced by an ordinary lightning discharge. The lightning bolt heats the air around it so quickly (within a few millionths of a second) and to such a high temperature (about 10,000° C, or about 18,000° F) that the air molecules are pushed apart with great force, much like in an explosion. A wave of compressed air (a sound wave) moves out from the lightning bolt.
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If you study the details of lightening, u will find that there are some strikes that are between the clouds. Some hit the earth. There is some detailed mechnisms described in books. There u will find terms like pilot leader, streamers, etc.\n\nWhen the lightning occurs, the air gets ionised. So, even if u capture a  Lightening in your tower, the air will become an ionised conductor, so the charge will go to thwe ground. \n\nThe strike from ground occurs as well as the strike from the cloud. \n\nAbove all it is not feasible.\n\nThank you.
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From a distance, lightning will come before the thunder.  But at the point of the bolt, they occur at the same time.\n\nFrom the source below:\n"Actually, they do occur at the same time. The time difference that you sense is due to the way sound and light travel. Light travels extremely fast (300,000,000 m/s). In fact, it is faster than anything else. Sound travels at a measly 343 m/s through air. Therefore we can see light in an instant, but it takes a while to hear thunder."
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It is possible but it is quite rare. Here's why.\n\nA thunderstorm depends on rapidly rising  moist warm  air to produce the effects we see. These effects are: large volumes of rain in a short period of time, strongly gusting winds, hail, and of course lightning. When conditions aren't right (surface air is too cool and dry) it is impossible for air at the surface to rise fast and high enough to create a thunderstorm cell. Basically in winter the air is not warm or moist enough to produce thunderstorm cells.\n\nFor a deeper explanation check the source site.
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Lightning originates around 15,000 to 25,000 feet above sea level when raindrops are carried upward until some of them convert to ice. For reasons that are not widely agreed upon, a cloud-to-ground lightning flash originates in this mixed water and ice region. The charge then moves downward in 50-yard sections called step leaders. It keeps moving toward the ground in these steps and produces a channel along which charge is deposited. Eventually, it encounters something on the ground that is a good connection. The circuit is complete at that time, and the charge is lowered from cloud to ground. \nThe return stroke is a flow of charge (current) which produces a luminosity much brighter than the part that came down. This entire event usually takes less than half a second.
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Look, lightning and thunder HAPPEN at the same time. Lightning causes the air to displace and when it contracts again (immediately) you get thunder, the sound of air filling a gap. You see lightning first because it is traveling @ 180,000 mps, thunder travels at the speed of sound (depends on where you live). You can generally determine how far away you are from the place of origin by counting 1 one-hundred, 2 one hundred, etc until you hear thunder and divide that number by two. That is how many miles away you are.\n\nBTW, if you see lightning and hear thunder at the same time, the event is right where you are!
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Lightning is a powerful natural electrostatic discharge produced during a thunderstorm. This abrupt electric discharge is accompanied by the emission of visible light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The electric current passing through the discharge channels rapidly heats and expands the air into plasma, producing acoustic shock waves (thunder) in the atmosphere.\n\n\nThe saying "lightning never strikes twice in the same place" is false. The Empire State Building is struck by lightning on average 100 times each year, and was once struck 15 times in 15 minutes.\n\n\nk.m.
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Lightning and thunder actually occured the same time. Only light travels faster than sound, so we see lightning before hear thunder.\n\nLightning is actually negative charges (electron) which jump to positive charges. How this charges formed?, Well, simply by the cloud moving in the sky.\n\nCloud 'rub' against air particle and positive and negative charges formed. Negative charges tend to appear at the botom or cloud while positive charges tend to appear at the top.\n\nWhen two clouds collide, the negative charges 'jump' to the positive charges (massively). This produces light and sound,, like normal spark, (only its a giant spark in the sky),\n\nSometimes lightning is dangerous becoz some positie charges 'dropped' to the ground, and the eloctron jumps to the ground, (a human standing there will be Bad Luck)
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Lightning and thunder can happen while snowing, but it's quite rare.  It has to do with the fact that cold air holds less moisture than warm air.  The more moisture a cloud contains the bigger the storm becomes.  That's why thunderstorms are common in the warm weather months.  In the winter, less moisture is available which does not promote the forming of clouds that support thunderstorms.  However, with the right dynamics in the atmosphere, especially with nor'easters or lake effect snows, thundersnows occur.  Here in north central Indiana we had a thundersnow during an event that produced heavy snow a couple years ago.  I've only seen it once though in the 23 years I've lived here.