Question: What causes lightning?

Helena Quilter answered on 8 Mar 2016:

Hey there, great question!

Have you ever got a static electricity shock? It sometimes happens when you rub your feet on the carpet then touch a metal door handle. When lightning is made the same thing happens, but on a much bigger scale!

Lightning is an electric current. To make this electric current there first needs to be a cloud. The cloud is made when warm air rises up and meets cool air and the water in it cools down to form the cloud. At the very top of the cloud it gets so cold that the water starts to freeze and becomes ice. When this happens the cloud starts to become a thundercloud! All those little bits of ice start bumping into each other and when they do this an electrical charge starts to build up. Eventually this gets so big that the whole cloud has an electrical charge – so all the particles in the cloud start to have positive (+) or negative (-) charges!

When this happens, lighter particles which are positively charged move upwards and the heavier, negatively charged particles sink to the bottom of the cloud.When the charges have grown enough a giant spark (that’s the lightning!) happens between the charges.

Most lightning happens inside a cloud, but sometimes it happens between the cloud and the ground – when we see a bolt of lightning.

Did you know that some bolts of lightning can be about 50, 000 degrees Fahrenheit? That’s about 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun!