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Is It Normal for Lightning to Go Sideways?

When photographers take pictures of lightning, they often capture images of bolts reaching down from the clouds to strike a tall building, or perhaps the top of a tree. Lightning often travels between clouds and the ground, but it will move between any two areas that carry different electrical charges, meaning that lightning can, and frequently does, strike sideways as well.

The Foundations of Lightning
- Thunderclouds are drops of moisture cooled high in the atmosphere until they condense, forming a vapor. During a thunderstorm, these water particles acquire electric charges, though researchers have proposed different models explaining how this happens. Whether raindrops create charges by colliding and rubbing against each other as they fall, or winds transport charged particles called ions between the cloud and the ground, it is observed that thunderclouds generally carry positive charges up top and negative charges below.
The Attraction between Cloud and Ground
- As a thundercloud builds, the negatively charged particles at the bottom of the cloud begin to affect the electrical charges of ground particles. Thunderstorms create a positive charge across the surface below them, and because positive charges and negative charges find themselves attracted to each other, the goal being to become neutral and stable, an attraction develops between cloud and ground. Lightning then erupts as a charge that connects these two electrically opposite areas.
The Leap between and within Clouds
- Of all the lightning generated, it is estimated that only a third occurs between clouds and the ground. Far more common are the bolts that form above us. These can strike between the positive part of one cloud and the negative part of another, or between differently charged regions of the same cloud, and are called intracloud lightning. As often as intracloud lightning occurs, scientists believe that as much as 90 percent of it is not visible to observers on the ground.
The Escape from within Clouds
- To reach those areas of opposing charges within clouds, lightning can travel in any direction, including sideways. A lightning bolt is not restricted to traveling in only one direction, however. One visually stunning phenomenon known as a ̶0;bolt from the blue̶1; occurs when intracloud lightning redistributes atmospheric charges. As a result, lightning that begins traveling upward or sideways gets redirected toward the ground, striking up to 10 miles away from the cloud that birthed it.

Nature