Lightning

Photograph by Scott Sroka
Tendrils of lightning snake across a stormy sky in Madeira Beach, Florida. A stretch of Interstate 4 between Orlando and St. Petersburg is known as "lightning alley," because the area reportedly sees more lightning streaks than any other U.S. region.


Photograph by Joel Sartore
Prongs of intracloud lightning reach across the sky above a butte in Wyoming's Red Desert. The most common type of lightning, intracloud lightning takes place within a single cumulonimbus cloud.


Photograph by Taylor S. Kennedy
Lightning streaks across the sky over Vinales Valley, Cuba. Lightning can travel up to 93,000 miles (150,000 kilometers) per second and reach temperatures of 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 degrees Celsius), more than four times hotter than the surface of the sun.


Photograph by Michael K. Nichols
Shocks of lightning split a cloud formation over Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. Tanzania's neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is home to the world's most lightning-pelted region, which, according to NASA, absorbs 158 thunderbolts per square kilometer (0.4 square miles) every year.



Photograph by Ta Wiewandt/Gety Images
Mother Nature paints an electric-blue sky with a bold twist of lightning. Lightning and thunder occur simultaneously, but because light travels faster than sound, we see lightning first. Count the seconds between a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder and divide by five to estimate how far away in miles the storm is. Divide by three for kilometers.



Photograph by William R. Curstinger
Whips of lightning cut a dramatic scene across a storm-darkened sky in Patagonia, Argentina. Most lightning occurs within cumulonimbus clouds like these, but it can also be released from wide, layered formations called stratiform clouds.




Photograph by Raymond K. Gehman
A purplish twilight sky over Georgia's Cumberland Island National Seashore glows as fingers of lightning spread among the clouds.