Step Leaders
•The dry air is a good electrical insulator, so a flow of
current can not occur.
• For
cloud-to-ground lightning to occur, a stepped-leader must emanate from the cloud base.
•The leader is essentially an ionized
particle chamber about 10 cm (4 in) in diameter which forks repeatedly from a main
channel.
•Each section travels about 50-100 m in a microsecond (a
millionth of a sec).
•The sections continue until contact is made with an unlike
charged area (the ground).
