the.com/lightning
a five-mile electric scribble that heats the air hotter than the sun's surface
means A sudden, powerful discharge of static electricity between clouds or between a cloud and the ground, seen as a brilliant flash of light.
from Straight from Old English 'lihting,' meaning a making-bright or flashing — a verbal noun built on 'lihtan,' 'to make light, to shine.' It shares its glowing root with 'light' itself (Old English 'leoht'), tracing back to the Proto-Indo-European '*leuk-,' a brightness-word that also lit up Latin 'lux' and Greek 'leukos' (white). So the bolt is, quite literally, the sky 'lightening.'
- sun-beating heat
- Channels hit 50,000°F, five times the sun's surface
- thunder's source
- Air explodes outward, the bang is its shockwave
- strike count
- Earth gets roughly 8 million bolts daily
- speed
- Return stroke travels at 270,000 miles per hour
- survivors
- About 90 percent of strike victims live
for instance
roy sullivan park ranger — struck by lightning 7 times between 1942-1969 in virginia, the most documented strikes on a single person