Lightning is a bolt of electricity. When a cloud somehow gets a positively charged top and a negatively charged bottom, the charges travel to an object or another cloud. When a positive charge connects with a negative charge, or vice versa, a bolt of electricity or "lightning" is caused. It travels from the cloud down the connection between the two charges to the other object such as a building or tree. Lightning can send 10-100 million volts of electricity to the object. Lightning is 54,000° Fahrenheit; that's six times hotter than the sun! Ouch!

Some people say lightning never strikes in the same place twice. Not true! After a bolt goes through the current, the connection between a positive and negative charge, it still hangs in the air so another charge might travel down the same path. One person has been struck about 8 times in a row in the same place, and still lived!! It doesn't happen very often, but people have been struck by lightning. The outcome isn't very pretty. Most people struck by lightning don't live, but some people have survived to tell how terrifying it was.

Have you ever gone in a pool and seen dark thunder clouds in the distance, and then everyone had to get out of the pool? That's because if lightning would strike the water, which it can, the lightning would run through the water and electrocute you, and that would be bad. If you are caught outside in a thunder storm DO NOT, I repeat ,DO NOT take cover under a tree or with a metal object. They have a higher risk of being struck. If possible, take cover in a car, a building, a ditch, or get on a log and get your feet off the ground in an open area. Some houses my have a lightning rod on their roof. This is so lightning won't strike the house. The lightning will hit the rod and travel down a wire into the ground so it doesn't hurt anybody or anything.

If you were ever afraid of rain storms it may because of the loud crack of thunder, the sound that lightning makes. Lightning is faster than sound so you see lightning then you hear thunder. You can tell how far away lightning is by counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder. Every five seconds is equal to one mile.

There are three types of clouds, Cumulus, Stratus, and Cirrus. Cumulus are the big fluffy clouds that look like pictures, they also produce rain clouds. See rain for details. Stratus clouds are the high layered clouds. If you see them, a cold or warm front is coming. And Cirrus clouds are the very high cottony light clouds, thet mean, most of the time, rain with in the next 48 hours. There are other clouds like nimbo stratus, cumulonimbus, and cirrostratus. But I won't go in to details with them.