Clouds to the ground lightning strikes are a common thing about 100 strikes Earth’s surface every second yet their power is special. Each bolt can consist of one billion volts of electricity.

This enormous electrical discharge is caused by an imbalance between positive and negative charges. During a storm, colliding particles of rain, ice, or snow increase this imbalance and often negatively charge the lower reaches of storm clouds. Objects on the ground, like steeples, trees, and the Earth itself, become positively charged creating an imbalance that nature seeks to cure by passing a flow between the two charges.

A step like series of negative charges, called a stepped leader, works its way gradually downward from the bottom of a storm cloud toward the Earth. Each of these sections are about 150 feet long. When the lowermost step comes within 150 feet  of a positively charged object it is met by a climbing surge of positive electricity, called a streamer, which can rise up through a building, a tree, or even a person. The process forms a channel through which electricity is transferred as lightning.

Some types of lightning, including the most common types, never leave the clouds but travel between differently charged areas within or between clouds. Other rare forms can be sparked by extreme forest fires, volcanic eruptions, and snowstorms. Ball lightning, a small, charged sphere that floats, glows, and bounces along unaware to the laws of gravity or physics, still puzzles scientists.

Lightning is extremely sharp. Fiery flash can heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface. This heat causes surrounding air to quickly expand and vibrate, which creates the clanging thunder we hear a short time after seeing a lightning flash.

Lightning is not only wonderful, it’s dangerous. Around 2,000 people are killed international by lightning each year. Hundreds more survive strikes but suffer from a groups of lasting symptoms, including memory loss, dizziness, weakness, numbness, and other still life ailments.