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Registered Member #1822
Joined: Fri Nov 21 2008, 08:04PM
Location:
Posts: 300
Last night there was a thunderstorm with lots of very impressive lightning flashes. At one point I saw 3 strikes at once. How is that possible? My only guess is that the first strike threw off a streamer that hit another cloud which caused that cloud to strike and a streamer from that one hit another which caused it to strike as well. Can anyone explain how there can be simultaneous strikes?
Registered Member #2028
Joined: Mon Mar 16 2009, 08:13PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 319
If you mean 3 lightnings in the same path, or what seems like a single flashing strike that is because a lightning is in fact one large LC oscillator. It has an inductance (the bolt) in series with two leaders (cloud and ground) separated by an insulator (atmosfere). So lightning behaves much like a tesla coil secondary. The bolt is brightest when the current is high, and is almost invisible when the current changes direction, hence the flashing.
If you mean three separate lightnings striking at the same time then im not sure. I have also witnessed that phenomenon and i have a theory. When step leaders begin streching from the cloud towards the ground the strong electric fields forms several positive streamers on grounded objects, streching towards the step leader. When the step leader and one of the streamers connect, the large capacitor is short-circuited and a lightning is seen.
Incredible photo of a positive streamer forming on a car, just prior of a lightning strike.
I believe a powerful lightning bolt could make quite long streamers, and that would reduce the distance a potential second lightning would have to travel. My guess is that this reduced distance can "invite" a second bolt to strike almost simultaneously, hitting the streamers made by the first lightning.
Please remember that this is just a theory of mine.
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Lightning strikes
