Best Answer: Lightning is simply a static discharge between the clouds or the clouds and the ground. What happens is that the collision of various particles in storms, such as raindrops, snowflakes, and hail cause a static charge to build, just like when you walk along carpet on a dry day. By processes not yet fully understood, these charges separate within areas of the storm. Also beneath the storm a charge builds along the surface. Now air is a good insulator, thus the charges initially are kept separate. But as the opposing charges build, they reach out towards each other in narrow channels. These channels continue to lengthen and bend, and when two opposing channels contact each other, the lightning occurs and the charge is drained.