 Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs typically during a thunderstorm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud called intercloud lightning or I see between two clouds CC lightning or between a cloud and the ground CG lightning. The charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equalize themselves through this discharge referred to as a flash. The lightning flash can also be a strike if it involves an object on the ground. Lightning creates light in the form of black body radiation from the very hot plasma created by the electron flow and sound in the form of thunder. Lightning may be seen and not heard when it occurs at a distance too great for the sound to carry as far as the light from the strike or flash. Electrification, the details of the charging process, are still being studied by scientists but there is general agreement on some of the basic concepts of thunderstorm electrification. The main charging area in the thunderstorm occurs in the central part of the storm where air is moving upward rapidly updraft and temperatures range from negative 15 to negative 25 degrees C5 to negative 13 degrees F C figure to the right. At that place, the combination of temperature and rapid upward air movement produces a mixture of super cool cloud droplets, small water droplets below, freezing small ice crystals, and gravel soft hail. The updraft carries the super cool cloud droplets and very small ice crystals upward. At the same time, the gravel, which is considerably larger and denser, tends to fall or be suspended in the rising air. The differences in the movement of the precipitation cause collisions to occur. When the rising ice crystal collide with gravel, the ice crystals become positively charged and the gravel becomes negatively charged. The updraft carries the positively charged ice crystal upward toward the top of the storm cloud. The larger and denser gravel is either suspended in the middle of the thunderstorm cloud or falls toward the lower part of the storm. The result is that the upper part of the thunderstorm cloud becomes positively charged while the middle to lower part of the thunderstorm cloud becomes negatively charged.