- Recently, thirty people were killed in separate incidents of lightning in various parts of the country.
- Lightning is the biggest contributor to accidental deaths due to natural causes.
Important points:
- It is a very rapid and massive discharge of electricity in the atmosphere. It is the process of occurrence of a natural ‘electrical discharge of very short duration and high voltage between a cloud and the ground or within a cloud’, accompanied by a bright flash and sound, and sometimes thunderstorms.
- Inter cloud or intra cloud (IC) lightning are visible and harmless.
- Cloud to ground (CG) lightning is harmful as the ‘high electric voltage and electric current’ leads to electrocution.
- It is a result of the difference in electrical charge between the top and bottom of a cloud.
- The lightning-generating clouds are typically about 10-12 km in height, with their base about 1-2 km from the Earth’s surface. The temperatures at the top range from -35°C to -45°C.
- As water vapour moves upwards in the cloud, it condenses into water due to decreasing temperatures. A huge amount of heat is generated in the process, pushing the water molecules further up.
- As they move to temperatures below zero, droplets change into small ice crystals. As they continue upwards, they gather mass, until they become so heavy that they start descending.
- It leads to a system where smaller ice crystals move upwards while larger ones come down. The resulting collisions trigger release of electrons, in a process very similar to the generation of electric sparks. The moving free electrons cause more collisions and more electrons leading to a chain reaction.
- The process results in a situation in which the top layer of the cloud gets positively charged while the middle layer is negatively charged.
- In little time, a huge current, of the order of lakhs to millions of amperes, starts to flow between the layers.
- It produces heat, leading to the heating of the air column between the two layers of cloud.
- It is because of this heat that the air column looks red during lightning.
- The heated air column expands and produces shock waves that result in thunder sounds.
- The Earth is a good conductor of electricity. While electrically neutral, it is relatively positively charged compared to the middle layer of the cloud. As a result, an estimated 20-25% of the current flow is directed towards the Earth.
- It is this current flow that results in damage to life and property.
- Lightning has a greater probability of striking raised objects on the ground, such as trees or buildings.
- Lightning Conductor is a device used to protect buildings from the effect of lightning. A metallic rod, taller than the building, is installed in the walls of the building during its construction.
- The most lightning activity on Earth is seen on the shore of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.
- At the place where the Catatumbo river falls into Lake Maracaibo, an average 260 storm days occur every year, and October sees 28 lightning flashes every minute – a phenomenon referred to as the Beacon of Maracaibo or the Everlasting Storm.
SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES.MINT