Who has, or has not, heard of "cloud to ground lightning"?

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   The Examiner-1posted 10 years ago

   Who has, or has not, heard of "cloud to ground lightning"?
   
   All of the years that I lived in New Jersey (about 30) I had never heard of it - until I moved down south. Now, that is about all that we get - and it is deadly.

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   sheilamyersposted 10 years ago

   Cloud to ground lightning is just one type of the electrical phenomenon most people group together and simply call lightning. When the electrical current leaves a cloud and makes contact with the ground, that's cloud to ground lightning - what most people would call a strike or lightning strike. These strikes hit trees, buildings, people, etc. So yes, the answer is that they are dangerous.

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      The Examiner-1posted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I know what it is - now. I just do not like it. For 30 years up in the nortern state I heard about trees occasionally hit by "lightning". Now in 4-5 years in the southern state I have heard about so many "people" killed by cloud-to-ground lightning!

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   JThomp42posted 10 years ago

   Lightning strikes the ground, the air, or inside clouds. There are roughly 5 to 10 times as many cloud flashes as there are cloud-to-ground flashes.
   
   There are two types of ground flashes: natural (those that occur because of normal electrification in the environment), and artificially initiated or triggered. Artificially initiated lightning includes strikes to very tall structures, airplanes, rockets and towers on mountains. Triggered lightning goes from ground to cloud, while “natural” lightning is cloud to ground.
   
   In cloud-to-ground lightning (CG), a channel of negative charge, called a stepped leader, will zigzag downward in roughly 50-yard segments in a forked pattern. This stepped leader is invisible to the human eye, and shoots to the ground in less time than it takes to blink. As it nears the ground, the negatively charged stepped leader is attracted to a channel of positive charge reaching up, a streamer, normally through something tall, such as a tree, house, or telephone pole. When the oppositely-charged leader and streamer connect, a powerful electrical current begins flowing. A return stroke of bright luminosity travels about 60,000 miles per second back towards the cloud. A flash consists of one or perhaps as many as 20 return strokes. We see lightning flicker when the process rapidly repeats itself several times along the same path. The actual diameter of a lightning channel is one-to two inches.

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      The Examiner-1posted 10 years agoin reply to this

      When I lived in NJ all the weatherman said was "Thuderstorms today". Now it is "Severe T-storms with critical cloud-to-ground lightning". After the storms you hear about all of the people who were hit by the lightning. I never heard it this bad.

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