The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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To understand why thunderstorms occur more often during the warm months requires some understanding of thunderstorm basics.
Thunderstorms thrive under certain conditions. The two most basic elements that cause a thunderstorm to develop are:
- Moisture
- Rapidly rising warm air
Because moisture and warmth are crucial to thunderstorms, it makes sense that they would occur more often in the spring and summer, particularly in humid areas such as the southeastern United States. The high humidity, in conjunction with warm temperatures, creates massive amounts of warm, moist air rising into the atmosphere, where it can easily form a thunderstorm.
Where does the thunder (and lightning) come from? The basic idea is that thunder clouds can become giant Van de Graaff generators and create huge charge separations within the cloud.science.howstuffworks.com/...
Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs typically during a thunderstorm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between two clouds (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning).
The charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equalize themselves through this discharge referred to as a flash. A lightning flash can also be a strike if it involves an object on the ground. Lightning creates light in the form of black body radiation from the very hot plasma created by the electron flowen.wikipedia.org/...
Storm chaser Pecos Hank:
Catatumbo lightning (Spanish: Relámpago del Catatumbo)[1] is an atmospheric phenomenon in Venezuela. It occurs only over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo.
It originates from a mass of storm clouds at a height of more than 1 km, and occurs during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour. It occurs over and around Lake Maracaibo, typically over the bog area formed where the Catatumbo River flows into the lake.[2]
Catatumbo lightning changes its frequency throughout the year, and it is different from year to year. For example, it ceased from January to March 2010, apparently due to drought, temporarily raising fears that it might have been extinguished permanently.[3][4][5]en.wikipedia.org/...
Watch lightning strikes from space
cnn.com/...
LIGHTNING & ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY RESEARCH
EVERY SATURDAY AT 3 P.M., DON’T FORGET TO DROP INTO DAILY KOS TO VIEW THE COLLECTION OF LINKS AND EXCERPTS IN THE SPOTLIGHT ON GREEN NEWS & VIEWS, A LOOK AT THE ENVIRONMENTALLY ORIENTED POSTS THAT HAVE APPEARED AT THE SITE DURING THE PREVIOUS WEEK.
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