As I am sitting at home writing this, I hear thunder outside. One of my favorite sounds any time of year! You may be interested to know that there are several types of lightning that can occur in the atmosphere. This recent post from my friend Alicia Wasula of STM Weather describes the different types of lightning that can occur. You will see that “heat lightning” is not one of them. It’s a myth that heat lightning exists. Really it is just lightning that occurs so far away that you can’t hear the thunder (or else the sound waves get bent up into the sky and don’t reach your position near the ground due to vertical temperature variations. Ball lightning is something that is also very rare and hard to photograph. I have seen at least one AI-generated video of ball lightning on Twitter, so take anything you see like that very skeptically, but I do have friends who have seen it, so I know it does exist. If you do experience a thunderstorm, make sure that you follow the NWS warnings and get inside for at least 30 minutes to ensure that you don’t get hit by one of these surges of electricity.
