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50 free Lightning trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This lightning trivia quiz covers the most dramatic thing the sky does. The easy questions handle the basics: what lightning is, how hot it gets, what causes thunder, the counting trick for judging distance, and whether it really never strikes the same place twice. The harder end goes into the physics and the records: how graupel and ice crystals separate charge in a storm, stepped leaders and return strokes, why positive strikes are more dangerous, how many times a second the planet is hit, the 829-kilometre megaflash over Texas and Kansas, the Catatumbo storms over Lake Maracaibo, fulgurites, X-rays and antimatter from thunderclouds, lightning on Jupiter and Saturn, and the gods from Zeus to Raijin who were once blamed for it. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our weather, natural disasters and hurricanes quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how hot does the air around a lightning flash get?
About 30,000 C
That is several times hotter than the surface of the Sun, which is why the channel glows brilliant blue-white.
Q 02What causes thunder?
A shock wave from air heated and expanded by the discharge
The rolling rumble comes from sound arriving from different parts of the long, branching channel at slightly different times.
Q 03What is the scientific study of lightning called?
Fulminology
The World Meteorological Organization lists lightning as an Essential Climate Variable.
Q 04Which of the three primary forms of lightning is the most common?
Intra-cloud
Flashes within a single thundercloud far outnumber the strikes that reach the ground, which make up only about 25% worldwide.
Q 05Cloud-to-ground lightning is started by what moving down from the cloud?
A stepped leader
It is met by an upward streamer from the ground; once they attach, the main discharge follows.
Q 06What is the most luminous part of a lightning discharge called?
The return stroke
It races back up the leader network at up to a third of the speed of light.
Q 07Positive lightning makes up roughly what share of all strikes?
Less than 5%
Positive bolts are rarer but far more intense, with peak currents up to 400 kA and long continuing currents that start fires.
Q 08Positive strikes that travel long distances through clear air, giving no warning, are known as what?
Bolts from the blue
Positive lightning is also blamed for triggering sprites tens of kilometres above the ground.
Q 09What is the electric current of an average negative lightning bolt?
About 30,000 amperes
It transfers about 15 coulombs of charge and a gigajoule of energy in a flash.
Q 10In a thunderstorm, collisions between ice crystals and which soft hail particles separate charge?
Graupel
The ice crystals become positive and ride the updraft to the top; the heavier graupel goes negative and sinks.
Q 11Which region of a thunderstorm cloud typically becomes positively charged?
The top
A small pocket of positive charge near the bottom gives mature storms a tripolar structure.
Q 12Roughly what electric field strength does damp air need to break down and spark?
About 3 megavolts per metre
The atmosphere normally acts as an insulator between the charged regions until that threshold is passed.
Q 13Roughly how many times per second does lightning strike somewhere on Earth?
About 44
That adds up to nearly 1.4 billion flashes a year, about 70% of them over land in the tropics.
Q 21What are the glassy tubes called that form when lightning melts sandy soil?
Fulgurites
The channel of plasma fuses the sand around it into a hollow, branching tube.
Q 22Why is a lightning strike generally not dangerous to an aircraft?
The metal fuselage acts as a Faraday cage
Passengers usually never know it happened, though a nearby flash can blind the pilot for a moment or upset compasses.
Q 23Roughly what percentage of people struck by lightning survive?
About 90%
Survivors often suffer damage to internal organs and the nervous system.
Q 14Over which lake does the Catatumbo phenomenon produce the most lightning on Earth, some 250 bolts a day?
Maracaibo
The show runs on average 297 nights a year in Venezuela.
Q 15The village of Kifuka, second in the world for lightning density, is in which country?
DR Congo
At around 975 metres up, it takes about 158 strikes per square kilometre a year; Singapore and Central Florida's Lightning Alley are other hotspots.
Q 16What is a 'megaflash'?
A flash with a horizontal path of about 100 km or more
They only occur in mesoscale convective systems and typically last more than five seconds.
Q 17How long was the longest lightning flash ever observed, recorded across Texas and Kansas in October 2017?
829 km
It touched ground in five states and was only identified in 2025 from Geostationary Lightning Mapper data.
Q 18How long did the record lightning flash over Uruguay and Argentina on 18 June 2020 last?
17.1 s
It beat the previous record, also from Argentina, by 0.37 seconds.
Q 19On which planet did Voyager 1 discover lightning, at first dubbed an 'electrostatic discharge'?
Saturn
Jupiter's lightning is far more energetic than Earth's, and a new type there seems to come from ammonia 'mushballs'.
Q 20Which rover's microphone recorded a putative detection of lightning on Mars, reported in 2025?
Perseverance
Earlier claims of Martian electric discharges from 2009 could not be reproduced.
Q 24What kills more people in groups than the bolt itself does?
Step potentials in the ground around the strike
The huge current spreads out through the surface, and can flow up one leg and down the other of anyone standing nearby.
Q 25A three-second delay between lightning and thunder means the strike was how far away?
About 1 km
Sound covers about 343 metres per second, so five seconds is roughly a mile.
Q 26Lightning can be seen from over 160 km away, but thunder only travels roughly how far?
About 32 km
That is why 'heat lightning' flickers silently on a summer horizon.
Q 27What smell may accompany a very close lightning strike?
Ozone
The heat splits oxygen and nitrogen molecules, making ozone and nitrogen oxides.
Q 28Lightning plays a role in the nitrogen cycle by turning atmospheric nitrogen into what?
Nitrates that rain deposits as fertiliser
Each flash in temperate regions makes about 7 kg of nitrogen oxides on average.
Q 29Roughly what share of forest fires worldwide are started by lightning?
About 10%
It is the major natural cause of wildfire, and Arctic lightning fires may rise with climate change.
Q 30Who first predicted, in 1925, that lightning produces X-rays?
C.T.R. Wilson
No evidence appeared until 2001-02, when rocket-triggered strikes in New Mexico gave off X-rays.