Lightning

Inter-cloud lightning over Toulouse (France)
Creative Commons image.

I love storms. I especially like seeing lightning fork down from the sky and hearing the thunder boom a few seconds afterword. Lately with all the rainy weather we’ve been having I started wondering: Why does lightning strike? How does thunder make its signature rumbling sound? What happens if you get hit by lightning?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sources.