[TowerTalk] Is lightning hitting the tower..or the yagi's

[jimlux]

Andy wrote:
> 
>> In 'normal' lightning it is a 'negatively charged downward leader' that
>> comes out of the cloud.  It progresses in 50-100m jumps as the charge pushes
>> it down... Note, I said PUSHES, the ground influence on the leader direction
>> is relatively small, it is the gross field gradient between the earth and
>> cloud that causes the major movement groundward at about 1/3c.
> 
> Amazing that it can accelerate and push particles close to relativistic speeds!

the particles aren't actually moving, it's charge flowing.  Just as the 
electrons in a wire don't actually move at the speed of light, though 
the EM wave does.