Anvil crawlers are often very high-altitude events, and as such typically result in soft, rolling thunder due to their great distance from the observer. +CG flashes typically have only a single return stroke, and they are more likely than -CGs to have a sustained current flow. Upward triggered lightning usually occurs in response to a natural lightning flash, but on rare occasions can be “self-triggered”—usually in winter storms with strong winds.

It can then stay within the cloud or continue to travel through the open air and eventually to ground.

There are roughly 5 to 10 times as many flashes that remain in the cloud as there are flashes which travel to the ground, but individual storms may have more or fewer flashes reaching ground. Types of Lightning Intra-Cloud: The most common type of lightning. There is no safe place outside during …

Types of Lightning Cloud-to-ground lightning bolts are a common phenomenon—about 100 strike Earth’s surface every single second—yet their power is … Close your eyes and picture a lightning strike.

Does lightning go up or down? The little 'static' sparks between your finger and a doorknob are, technically speaking, the same basic process at work, just on a smaller scale. Credit:

It ... many positive lightning strikes occur near the edge of the cloud, sometimes as far as 10 miles away from any rainfall! Credit: An illustration of different kinds of transient luminous events (TLEs)Red sprite, photographed from the International Space Station. The 'types' of lightning we'll discuss here refer more to how a discharge appears to an observer, what the starting and ending terminii of the channel are, and in what direction the formation of the channel took place. There are two ways that flashes can strike ground: naturally downward (those that occur because of normal electrification in the environment), and artificially initiated or triggered upward. Sprites (see below) are usually associated with the more intense positive CGs.

The first return stroke of a negative CG is usually the only branched one - the branches usually do not illuminate again in subsequent return strokes. The polarity of lightning discharge can affect the way it propagates and branches in space and time, but in the end, it's all an electrostatic discharge - a 'spark' in its fundamental sense. Ball lightning - A phenomenon where lightning forms a slow, moving ball that can burn … Negative CGs commonly consist of multiple "return strokes", which are additional pulses of current that illuminate the channel again and again. Most lightning starts inside a thunderstorm and travels through the cloud. via GIPHY. How Many Types of Lightning Are There? Does lightning go up or down? The net effect of this flash is to lower negative charge from the cloud to the ground so it is commonly referred to as a negative CG (or -CG). Anvil crawlers can either occur independently completely within the cloud, or in connection with a cloud-to-ground discharge. Camera movement during the capture of a lightning photograph can also result in the same effect:

Types of cloud-to-ground lightning include staccato, forked, ribbon, and bead lightening.

Artificially initiated lightning is associated with things like very tall structures, rockets and towers. Positive CGs usually consist of only one return stroke, which is typically very bright and intense relative to other lightning activity in a storm. Some storms produce more +CGs and, more commonly some more -CGs (and some both) because of the charge distributions within the storms.

The name 'anvil crawler' is derived from the visible 'crawling' motion and their tendency to appear along the underside of the anvil portions of a thunderstorm. Triggered lightning starts at the “ground,” which in this case may mean the top of a tower, and travels upward into the cloud, while “natural” lightning starts in the cloud and travels to ground. On a small scale, all lightning is essentially the same - a channel of ionized air carrying electrical current between two differing areas of charge. Most of these remain within the cloud and are called Large thunderstorms are capable of producing other kinds of electrical phenomena called Fun fact: Aircraft pilots occasionally reported seeing lightning above storms for many years before researchers documented sprites and other TLEs with sensitive video cameras.An illustration of different kinds of transient luminous events (TLEs) Red sprite, photographed from the International Space Station. It is common for photographs of positive CGs to be overexposed unless the photographer has stopped the lens down significantly. Less commonly, a downward traveling positive leader followed by an upward return stroke will lower positive charge to earth, referred to as a positive CG (or +CG).

Storms which produce mostly negative CGs tend to produce CGs earlier in the storm lifecycle and produce significantly more CGs than similar storms which instead produce mostly positive CGs.There are many flashes which do not reach ground. Thunder from a positive CG is typically very loud, and many times sounds like a series of deep, low-frequency sonic booms.

If the plane is below the cloud, then a CG flash could result.The more common cloud-to-ground flash has a negative stepped leader that travels downward through the cloud, followed by an upward traveling return stroke. Lightning can strike where it’s not raining, or even before rain reaches the ground! We bet you’re picturing a bolt that seems to extend from the clouds down to the ground, tree, or building.