Natural Disasters and Phenomena

I wonder why volcanoes blow their tops and other questions about natural disasters. Weird as folk lightning come from. A blinding river of light thickets through the sky, this is lightning, a giant electrical spark that begins inside towering thundercloughs. Lightning hits the air in this path until it is very hot, hotter than the sun's surface, and the air explodes in a deafening crush of thunder. A thunder cloud becomes electrically charged. When strong winds toss water droplets, ice crystals and a hailstones up and down inside it, as the water droplets and ice crystals toss to about, the generate a huge charge of static electricity. This charge is released in brilliant flashes of lightning. The Vikings believe that lightning was made by the godful hurling his hammer and that thunder was the rumble of his chariot's wheels. If lightning hits the sandy ground, the heat can melt the sand, as the sand cools into a solid again, it forms a glassy sculpture of the lightning flashpath. What is ball lightning? Eerie glowing balls of light are sometimes seen during thunderstorms, floating a little away above the ground. This spooky effect is called ball lightning. Scientists are not sure what causes it, but the balls may be glowing hot gases, given off when folk lightning strikes the ground. Lightning once struck the Empire State Building in New York, USA, 15 times in 15 minutes. Why do forests catch fire? It doesn't take much to start a fire. When plants are partied by a hot, rainless summer, a flash of lightning can sometimes spark a dry tree into flame, but most of the forests the fires are caused by people being careless, for example, by tossing away a match that is still light. Fire can burn through a kilometers of forest in an hour, and if the fire rages out of control, it can devastate thousands of hectares of land. Indonesian forests the fires rage the whole month in 1997, creating a choking blanket of smoke over much of southeast Asia. Although forests the fir