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Lightning is an atmospheric discharge of electricity, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms. more...

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A bolt of lightning can travel at a speed of 100000 mph (160934 km/h), and can reach temperatures approaching 28000 °C (60000 °F), hot enough to fuse soil or sand into glass channels. There are over 16 million lightning storms every year.

Lightning can also occur within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions, or can be caused by violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.

How lightning initially forms is still a matter of debate: Scientists have studied root causes ranging from atmospheric perturbations (wind, humidity, and atmospheric pressure), to the impact of solar wind and accumulation of charged solar particles. Ice inside a cloud is thought to be a key element in lightning development, and may cause a forcible separation of positive and negative charges within the cloud, thus assisting in the formation of lightning.

Early ideas about and research on lightning

The ancient Greeks believed that their chief deity Zeus was in command of the natural phenomena of lightning and thunderbolts. In the Book of Job God asks "Will lightning flash at your command?" (38:35). In his Dream Pool Essays written in 1088 AD, the Song Dynasty polymath Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095) wrote that when a house belonging to one Li Shunju had been struck by lightning, everyone assumed that the house would be burnt to the ground. To everyone's surprise, some of the wooden walls were merely blackened and lacquerwares untouched, while metal objects such as a steel sword were melted into liquid. Kuo compared this phenomenon to the equally strange effects of water being unable to douse Greek fire (which had been known to the Chinese since the Arabs had traded it, or a chemical composition fairly equal to it, in the 10th century). For these strange effects of lightning, Kuo wrote:

Thus was the frustration of learned men in his time of the desire to know the nature of lightning and other such common phenomena. However, in the Western world details of its force would become known by the 18th century.

Read more at Wikipedia.org