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| Inter-cloud lightning over Toulouse (France) Creative Commons image. |
Lightning
happens because of electrical tension between the ground and storm clouds. Warm
air currents in the bottom of a cloud rises to the top half of the cloud and
freezes into ice crystals. The heavy ice then crashes down to the bottom of the
cloud, bringing a downdraft of cold air with it. Air currents circulating
throughout the cloud smash ice and water particles together, generating
electricity. That electricity charges ice and water particles. Positive particles
float to the top of the cloud, and the heavier negative particles, known as
graupel, sink to the bottom.
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| Author's diagram of a lightning strike. |
During the
storm, especially during a violent windy storm, clouds move around. The
movement of the clouds over the ground makes the ground positively charged. A
tense electrical field develops between the earth and sky.
Once the
tension becomes strong enough, the cloud sends out a “stepped ladder” of
invisible negative charge that reaches for a good conductor to the ground,
usually something tall like a tree. At the same time, the ground sends up a “streamer”
of positive charge. When the stepped ladder meets the positive streamer the
charges neutralize in a flash, that’s lightning. Lightning bolts tend to be
only two inches in diameter, but the air around them reaches a shocking 54,000 degrees
Fahrenheit. That’s five times hotter than the surface of the sun.
Air isn’t
used to being this hot. When heated by the lightning, it compresses faster than
the speed of sound, and then expands to send out shock waves that’s thunder.
Thunder rumbles because lightning occurs in a series of short bursts. Since
light travels faster than sound we see lightning before we hear thunder.
Lightning is,
extremely hot, extremely powerful. What happens when you are hit by such heat
and power? Immediate effects can include death, cardiac arrest, and severe
burns caused by water on the body quickly turning to steam. Sometimes victims
of lightning strikes will be tattooed with branching marks known as Lichtenberg
figures caused by high voltage electrical discharges that pass on the surface
or through insulating materials. In lightning strike victims, figures are
formed by ruptured capillaries and generally disappear after a few months. Some
people will show no visible signs of injury after being hit by lightning, but
the trauma inside their bodies is huge. Long-term effects of a lightning strike
can include hearing loss, chest pains, seizures, nausea, amnesia, and headaches.
Lightning can cause brain damage with strange effects, though not necessarily
adverse ones.
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| Lichtenberg Figures Creative Commons image. Copyright holder: Bert Hickman |
Being hit
by lightning is traumatic and emotional, resulting in a huge release of
neurotransmitters. The high voltage electricity coursing the strike victim’s
brain has effects we don’t know the full volume of. After being hit by
lightning, some people experience a change in values or interests, but we don’t
know why.
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| View of lightning system from above. Creative Commons image. |
One lightning
strike victim struggled with addiction before she was hit and felt that the
lightning strike helped turn her life around.
A more
famous example is Tony Cicoria’s lightning strike story. Cicoria was hit by
lightning in his 40s, and though he was knocked unconscious and had a near
death, and out-of-body experience, he didn’t even go to the hospital. His doctor,
who saw him soon after the hit, didn’t find anything wrong with Cicoria aside
from occasional memory lapses which only lasted a few months.
The
lightning must have effected Cicoria’s brain more than he or his doctor thought
because after the memory lapses ended, Cicoria began to feel an overwhelming desire
to listen to classical piano music, especially Chopin. Before the strike he’d preferred
rock music. He immediately began to teach himself to play and spent every
moment he could at the piano.
Soon he
started to hear classical piano music in his head, not musical hallucinations,
but as he described it, a flow of musical inspiration. Cicoria longed to notate
and perfect this music in his head, and he began to painstakingly teach himself
to compose. Cicoria doubts he would have ever done this if it weren’t for the
lightning strike. You can listen to one of Cicoria’s compositions, fittingly
called the lightning sonata, here.
