Question

How do tell predict when lighting will strike?

Answer 1

By exploiting its dependence on particular weather conditions and by averaging over sufficiently large spatial and temporal scales.

Forecasts can for example indicate the probability that lightning flash density over a particular area and period of time will exceed a certain threshold.

A key ingredient is intense  convection : the rising of plumes of moist air in response to instability in the atmosphere, usually associated with the development of cumulonimbus clouds.

Such atmospheric conditions often involve collisions between hydrometeors such as graupel, hail, ice particles and liquid water droplets.

The collisions may cause electric charges in those particles to separate, which leads to the creation of oppositely charged layers inside the clouds.

The resulting electric fields can lead to the powerful discharges we observe as lightning.

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