photo #6007338

When ice particles collide in the belly of a Cumulonimbus storm cloud, they exchange electrons. At least, they do when larger ones like hailstones collide with smaller ones like ice crystals. Don’t ask us why, it’s just what happens. The big hailstones pick up the electrons and so become negatively charged. The smaller ice crystals lose electrons and so become positively charged. Being heavier, the hailstones tend to fall towards the bottom of the cloud, while the lighter ice crystals are wafted up to the top by the powerful updrafts within the storm cloud. And so, there is a separation of charge within the mighty cloud beast. Its lower regions become negatively charged, while its upper reaches become positive. Such an enormous separation in charge can only exist for so long before something big happens. Big, like a huge bolt of lightning, a rush of electrons through the air at some 270,000 mph (435,000 km/h). In evening out the charge once again, the lightning bolt heats the air it passes through enough to make it explode in a peal of thunder. Can you hear it in your mind as you see this bolt of Cumulonimbus lightning spotted over Lubbock, Texas by Hannah Edelman, daughter of Cynthia Edelman (Member 45,621)?