how does lightning strike the ground
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The turbulence in the atmosphere causes friction among the clouds which gives rise to static charge on them. This charge accumulates over time until it becomes too much to handle. So, in order to neutralize the charge, the clouds exchange the dissimilar charges among themselves. The huge amount of energy heats up the atmosphere to a bright stream of plasma that we call lightning. Although, often there simply is too much charge, so much that the clouds can't balance among themselves, so they just pass it onto the Earth which is so big that it absorbs and neutralizes any amount of charge thrown at it. This is called a lightning strike.
Now, for the clouds the Earth is the nearest neutral surface to deposit their charges and that's why generally lightning stikes go for the ground. Now, the thing is that lightning is really really fast, so much so that it’s almost impossible to see how it moves between the clouds and the ground. If you could see them every time, you would see that they grow from leaders. These leaders are nothing but channels of conducting air that originate from both the clouds and the Earth (bearing opposite charges) these leaders grow and when they connect, they brighten up the sky with a lightning strike which follows the path of the leaders.
Usually, upward leaders (the ones originating from the Earth) are rather small compared to the downward leaders (the ones originating in the clouds), but when there is a high point present like a tall building or large tree, the upward leader streams out of it and can strech much further. The resultant lightning strike when viewed on high speed film reveals a stream that goes ‘upward' from the ground to a substantial distance before meeting a much smaller stream and completing the strike. This kind of ‘upward lightning' comprises only 1% of all strikes.