A lesson on lightning

There are some things I've learned about rain in North Carolina:

***Storms come fast

***It doesn't just sprinkle here...when it rains, it really rains.

***Rain is wetter here. (That sounds dumb, but we come from Colorado where it's really dry. The humidity makes it feel much wetter.)

***The thunder is loud.

***The lightning is scary.

And speaking of lightning....

on Saturday, Maya and I were sitting in our living room enjoying 

"Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince".

The weather had turned stormy a bit earlier and we'd gotten a huge downpour.

The thunder was still grumbling, but things seemed to be calming down.

Out of nowhere, we heard an enormous blam!

and Maya and I saw the lightning strike from our dining room window.

Maya says she thought it looked like a white sparkler on the 4th of July.

Personally, I think it looked like a big, silver disco ball in the sky.

At first I thought it hit between our house and our neighbor's,

but I think it was closer to the back of our neighbor's house.

She lost power.

(We didn't...however, a few of our breakers were tripped.)

She had to have the cable/phone/power people come out.

Yikes.

This afternoon, we were chased from a birthday celebration

at the pool for one of our friends

by another very quick,very heavy rain storm. 

Again, the thunder groaned, but it wasn't until later in the evening

when I heard the car alarm go off and then a second later

another big blam!

Of course, being a curious homeschooling mom,

I had to find out why the thunderstorms this summer

seem so much different from those of last year.

I sat down on the internet,

(when it felt safe to plug in all of the electronics again,)

and this is what I learned:

The answer is simply, humidity.

Water vapor, (which is another name for humidity),

plays a key role in lightning production in the atmosphere.

Clouds are the real generators of static charge as found in Earth's atmosphere,

 but the capability of clouds to hold massive amounts of electrical energy 

is directly related to the amount of water vapor, (or humidity) present in the local system.

In simple terms:

the more humidity, the more violent the lightning.

Last year was cool, at least for North Carolina standards,

and the humidity was lower.

This year has been much hotter and quite a bit more humid.

So, now I know.

Knowledge. It's a great and wonderful thing!

It won't keep me from jumping out of my chair

or wetting myself after a powerful jolt of adrenalin hits my system...

but at least I understand the science of it. :)

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your July!