What are the 4 types of lightning?

Types of Lightning
  • Cloud-to-Ground (CG) Lightning.
  • Negative Cloud-to-Ground Lightning (-CG) ...
  • Positive Cloud-to-Ground Lightning (+CG) ...
  • Cloud-to-Air (CA) Lightning. ...
  • Ground-to-Cloud (GC) Lightning. ...
  • Intracloud (IC) Lightning.
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What are the main types of lightning?

There are three common types of lightning: cloud to ground, cloud to cloud and cloud to air. Cloud to ground lightning is the most dangerous. The ground is mainly consisted of positively charged particles while the bottom of violent storm clouds have negative charged particles.
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What is the rarest type of lightning?

ball lightning, also called globe lightning, a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter.
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What is the most powerful kind of lightning?

Dark Lightning

These terrestrial gamma rays flashes, or TGFs, are among the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth, according to NASA. They're so powerful that they can blind satellite sensors hundreds of miles away.
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How many kinds of lightning are known?

There are three primary types of lightning which include: cloud-to-ground (the most commonly known type), cloud-to-air, and cloud-to-cloud. With cloud-to-ground lightning, the rapid discharge of lightning is a channel of negative charge that is attracted to the positively charged ground.
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7 Incredible lightning types | Amazing Weather



What is the rarest color of lightning?

Green lightning is a rare phenomenon that can be seen during a thunderstorm. Someone who has seen green lightning is extremely lucky as green lightning strikes are rarely seen. It is so rare that the only photograph of a green lightning strike is one from when the Chaiten volcano in Chile erupted.
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Is there Black lightning?

Scientists have just begun to understand a strange phenomenon known simply as "dark lightning". Different from regular lightning, dark lightning is a release of high-energy gamma radiation—sources include supernovae and supermassive black holes—that is completely invisible to the human eye.
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Is Gold lightning real?

Yellow lightning is uncommon; however, they tend to be cooler than the blue, lilac and white. They're caused to due to a high concentration of dust in the air. And is an indication of a dry thunderstorm with low-precipitation.
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Is red lightning real?

Red lightning doesn't exist in the literal sense, according to the National Weather Service. The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says.
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What is super lightning?

It's an atmospheric electrical phenomenon that discharges 1,000 times more energy than the typical lightning bolt. This supercharged version of lightning, called “superbolts,” are relatively poorly understood by scientists, at present.
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What is dark lightning?

Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
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What is Spider lightning?

Spider lightning refers to long, horizontally traveling flashes often seen on the underside of stratiform clouds. Spider lightning is often linked to +CG flashes.
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Is blue lightning real?

When an unexpected event happens people describe it as a “bolt from the blue”. The phrase is actually based on real weather phenomena where a lightning bolt will strike an area with no overhead clouds. While bolts from the blue don't originate from blue sky, they occur infrequently, are unexpected, and can be deadly.
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What are 5 types of lightning?

Types of Lightning
  • Cloud-to-Ground (CG) Lightning.
  • Negative Cloud-to-Ground Lightning (-CG) ...
  • Positive Cloud-to-Ground Lightning (+CG) ...
  • Cloud-to-Air (CA) Lightning. ...
  • Ground-to-Cloud (GC) Lightning. ...
  • Intracloud (IC) Lightning.
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What is a flash of lightning called?

A flash of light produced by short-duration, high-voltage discharge of electricity within a cloud, between clouds, or between a cloud and the earth. coruscation. fulguration. lightning. forked lightning.
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What is a lightning storm called?

A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are sometimes called thundershowers.
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What is a sprite in the sky?

What exactly is a sprite? Sprites are rapid flashes of red light that occur high up in the mesosphere, over 50 kilometres above the ground. Similar to how lightning is an electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, sprites are electrical discharges between the top of a thunderstorm and the upper atmosphere.
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How hot is violet lightning?

How Hot Is Purple Lightning? Purple lightning is often seen during thunderstorms and it's one of the more moderate forms of lightning with temperatures reaching up to 55,000 degrees Fahrenheit!
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What does pink lightning mean?

. Perhaps the strangest colors reported are instances of pink or green lightning seen during snowstorms. The phenomenon, known as”thundersnow”, is rare. The unique sky color is caused as snowflakes refract and reflect the white bolt in a unique way.
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What causes pink lightning?

Elements in the air, such as nitrogen or oxygen, can cause the lightning flash to take on a different color like pink or blue.
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What color is savitar's lightning?

Also, the armor is capable of changing the color of a speedster's lightning as the armor changed Savitar's lightning from yellow to white.
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What is Orb lightning?

Instances of ball lightning—glowing, electric orbs in the sky—have captivated and mystified us for centuries. The bizarre phenomenon, also known as globe lightning, usually appears during thunderstorms as a floating sphere that can range in color from blue to orange to yellow, disappearing within a few seconds.
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What does rainbow lightning mean?

The viral photo is especially rare because McCown had to be standing in between the sun and the storm at the exact moment when the angle of the sun hit the raindrops to form a rainbow, and the positive ground charges and negative cloud charges clashed in a flash of lightning. "It's a pretty rare thing," Cerveny said.
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What happens if you fly through dark lightning?

Unlike with regular lightning, though, people struck by dark lightning, most likely while flying in an airplane, would not get hurt. But according to Dwyer's calculations, they might receive in an instant the maximum safe lifetime dose of ionizing radiation — the kind that wreaks the most havoc on the human body.
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Is there lightning in the ocean?

Lightning doesn't strike the ocean as much as land, but when it does,it spreads out over the water, which acts as a conductor.
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