Stepped Leaders, Upward Streamers (The Birth Of Lightning)

             Okay everybody as stated last Night in my Facebook and Twitter Update I said that I was doing a 4 day special on Lightning Awareness. To kick everything off, I'll begin with the birth of lightning. How it all begins. Make sense right?

     So first things first, how it all starts. Raindrops  within a Thunderstorm cloud collide together,  clump together, and fly past each other at high speeds due to the winds up there. All of this movement creates a negative charge with the cloud itself. The positive Charges go to the very top of the cloud because there are positive charges on the ground. And the positives within the cloud wants nothing to do with that. So they run to the very to and the negative charges sink to the bottom like hot water in the tub. Now as the negative charges at the bottom of the cloud build up positive ions on the ground start to build. As the positive charges on the ground build they tend to attract to that negative charge at the bottom of the clouds. So as that attraction build the positive ground charges try to seach for ways up there to the cloudbase. Thats why taller objects always tend to get struck more because the higher up you go the closer the charges get to each other, which results in a spark that we call Lightning. Now as those positive charges are rising the charge never stop getting stronger. The charge get so strong to the point to whers as those charges are rising off of metal, wet, tall objects just before the strike itself you can literally see the positive charge rising off of certain objects. And that is called a "Upward Streamer".  Here's a Picture of a Upward Streamer.

As you can see even while the Lightning strike itself is in progress the Upward Streamers can still be visible. Usually the Upward Streamers and Stepped Leaders are visible in a electric flash that happens JUST before the actual Lightning strike happen. That flash is only a knee jerk dispersion of too much charge build up. 

Now this brings me to Whats known as "Stepped Leaders". As the positive charges on the ground build up and start to rise and attract to the negative charges at the bottom of the cloud, the really strong charge begin to become too much for those negative charges to handle and they start to search for ways to get to the ground. By that I mean gaps within the air anything that moves through the air to cause it to separate or move is what those charges look for. Think of water flowing down a hill unless there's a ditch or river the water zigzags down the hill trying to find the easiest way down. Stepped Leaders do the same they zigzag through the air looking for the easiest way down to make way for the Lightning Strike. As the Positive Streamer is reaching up its saying "Heyyyy Here I am!!"  The Stepped Leaders are saying "Okay Let me find the Easiest way for us to get to you" and you see this entire process as the Flash right before the actual Lightning Strike. 

Thanks for choosing me to be your go to guy for Severe Weather, and Weather information. I greatly appreciate it. I am The Arkansas Weather Hawk #ARWX