Won't be seeing much of me...

[OB1]

Originally posted by Dark Jaguar
Sorry OB1, that's an inaccuracy. Yes, lightning doesn't strike JUST from the sky down, but it also isn't JUST from the ground up. It's BOTH. A single strike is actually a sudden burst from both at once. That's how it works.

I meant to say that most people think that it's just cloud-to-ground, which is not true. And what you said isn't true, it's not both at once. The way lightning works is that first you have a charge difference between the cloud and the ground which sets things up, and then little pathways of charged electrons begin to develop, both from the cloud down and the ground up (which are called "leaders"). Then once the path is complete the charge difference discharges quickly, most often from the cloud to the ground but sometimes from the ground to the cloud. And then of course there's cloud-to-cloud lightning but that's a different topic (kinda).

That is how it works.