by Psnarf » Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:41 pm
(Better check your lepton count. Are you still glowing?)
I did not know that sprites propagate downward. Do elves behave in the same manner? Lightning storms remain mysterious. Allowing for the permittivity of wet air, there isn't enough of a charge differential to account for ground strikes. Charge carriers can be snow or ice crystals caught in powerful updrafts. I vaguely recall the rule-of-thumb for temperature vs altitude is about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit per thousand feet. At 100-degrees on the ground, the freezing point is only about 20Kft AGL. With updrafts pushed upward twice that distance, things get pretty cold near the top of a cumulo-nimbus cloud, the top of the anvil pretty much defined by the tropopause. I suspect that the ionosphere could be an easier target for lightning from the top of the cloud than the ground vs the bottom.
There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in my philosophy, as the Bard of Avon might have put it, were I in conversation with Hamlet instead of Horatio.
(Better check your lepton count. Are you still glowing?)
I did not know that sprites propagate downward. Do elves behave in the same manner? Lightning storms remain mysterious. Allowing for the permittivity of wet air, there isn't enough of a charge differential to account for ground strikes. Charge carriers can be snow or ice crystals caught in powerful updrafts. I vaguely recall the rule-of-thumb for temperature vs altitude is about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit per thousand feet. At 100-degrees on the ground, the freezing point is only about 20Kft AGL. With updrafts pushed upward twice that distance, things get pretty cold near the top of a cumulo-nimbus cloud, the top of the anvil pretty much defined by the tropopause. I suspect that the ionosphere could be an easier target for lightning from the top of the cloud than the ground vs the bottom.
There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in my philosophy, as the Bard of Avon might have put it, were I in conversation with Hamlet instead of Horatio.