[TowerTalk] lightning & trees

[Gary Schafer]

Any object can accumulate charge. A charged object can send out 
streamers. If one of those streamers happens to connect lightning will 
strike and complete the path.

Of course a more conductive object will handle the strike better than a 
poorly conducting one once a strike occurs.

A poorly conducting tree for example will heat up the moisture in it and 
turn it to steam and cause parts of the tree to be blown away by the 
steam pressure.
The lightning hitting that tree may arc to a better path part way down 
the poor conducting tree, leaving destruction from the arc.

A well grounded tower if hit will conduct the strike harmlessly to 
ground with little fan fare.

You can walk across a carpet and build up a charge on your body. 
Touching some other object you will feel the discharge. The object you 
touch to cause the discharge doesn't have to be grounded either.

An object doesn't have to be grounded to accumulate a charge. Nor does 
it have to be particularly conductive.

There are many cloud to cloud lightning strikes also. No ground involved.

73
Gary  K4FMX


doc wrote:
> I am no electrical engineer or physicist but this doesn't sound right.
> 
> The energy in lightning exists within the physical laws and would seem 
> to be seeking a state of balance, and one expects would do so as 
> efficiently as possible.
> 
> Would it not flow through the *best* path versus a lesser path should
> both options present?
> 
> Why would lightning fail to follow a superior path versus a lesser
> path?
> 
> Puzzled in lighting-alley Florida, doc
> 
>  > Gary Schafer wrote:
> 
>>Any tree or structure type in a given location has as good a chance as 
>>the next to be hit. A grounded tower has about the same chance of being 
>>hit as an ungrounded one. Conductivity of an object has little to do 
>>with its chance of being hit by lightning.
>>73 Gary  K4FMX
> 
>