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Grand Canyon, Arizona
Photograph by Michael K. Nichols
A dramatic cloudburst releases jagged bolts of lightning deep into the Grand Canyon near Point Sublime.
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Crawlers
Photograph by Roger Ressmeyer/Getty Images
Lightning bolts flare in all directions over an open plain. Cloud-to-cloud bursts, among the more rare forms of lightning, are nicknamed crawlers because they appear to crawl across the sky.
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Lightning Panorama
Photograph from Ingram Publishing/Getty Images
Bolts of lightning descend like tentacles from a storm-roiled sky. It was Benjamin Franklin who discovered in 1752 that lightning is actually electricity. In his now-famous experiment, he sent a kite with a metal key tied to the string up into a thunderstorm. When he saw sparks leap from the key, his hunch about lightning was confirmed.
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Lightning Hitting Ground
Photograph by Tom (Montana) Murphy
A tangle of lightning, including multiple ground strikes, crackles in the Montana sky. At any given time, some 2,000 thunderstorms worldwide produce lightning that strikes the Earth about 100 times every second.
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Lightning Over Amman, Jordan
Photograph by Priit J. Vesilind
Threads of lightning illuminate Amman, Jordan's nighttime cityscape. Lightning is a discharge of electricity that occurs when excess electrical charges build up in clouds.
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Lightning at Night, Walton, Nebraska
Photograph by Joel Sartore
Whips of lightning crack the sky near rural Walton, Nebraska. Because a flash of lightning is actually multiple strokes that occur in a fraction of a second, time exposure photographs like this best capture these rapid-fire displays.
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Lightning, North Carolina
Photograph by Skip Brown
A triple-strike of cloud-to-ground lightning connects saturated skies with arid sand in North Carolina's Jockey's Ridge State Park.
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Cactus and Lightning, Arizona
Photograph by Jim Zuckerman/Alamy
A saguaro cactus stands tall amid a frenzy of lightning bolts in Arizona. During thunderstorms in parts of the western United States, rain often evaporates before hitting the ground, making the region vulnerable to brush fires from lightning hitting the dry earth.
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Lightning Strike
Photograph by Richard Olsenius
Lightning strikes the ground near a dirt road somewhere in rural United States. Lightning occurs about 1.4 billion times per year, with about 20 million bolts hitting the Earth's surface.
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Bighorn Canyon, Montana
Photograph by Raymond K. Gehman
Lightning cuts a jagged line through the evening sky in Montana's Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. Lightning bolts symbolize things like power, swiftness, fire, or God's punishment in many cultures, including Norse, Roman, and Native American.
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