Weather

Lightning

During a thunderstorm ice particles collide and spit out positive and negative charges.  The protons collect at the top of the cloud and the electrons collect at the bottom of the storm cloud.  Since the atmosphere is a great insulator, a large amount of electric charge has to pile up to create the lightning.  Since opposites attract protons from the ground come together under the storm cloud and go up the highest object to try to reach the electrons.  A line of negative charges will descend down toward the protons while the protons reach out to the electrons.  When they connect it forms lightning.  This is invisible to the human eye so we can’t see that the lightning actually starts from the ground or wherever the highest point is that the protons reached.