Spectacular photo of multiple lightning strikes captured on film (then!) during a pretty hefty storm passing through Spokane, WA in the early hours of July 13,1914.

The most prudent and well educated electrical engineers will tell you that the physics of electricity are not fully understood...to this day! Lightning is very respected as an electrical science and since Ben Franklin's day (the kite with the key flown during a thunderstorm experiment) this natural and immense source of electrical energy has remained unpredictable.

The energy released during a single lightning stroke has typically been measured in tens of millions of volts at hundreds of thousands of amperes during only microseconds. Generally lightning discharges from above are of negative polarity. "Connection" with earth (and electrically-positive objects) generally "makes" a ground strike such that the ground is positively charged during the strike. Thus, in real simple terms, the electrical circuit is made and completed.