COLUMBIA, S.C. — According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), lightning strikes the United States about 25 million times a year. Lightning is most common during the summer, ...

Last week, we explored whether light is a wave or a particle... and were left with more questions than answers. Now, let’s take a look at how one of nature’s flashiest phenomena can affect another ...

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — A typical flash of lightning contains 300 million volts of electricity and is hotter than the surface of the sun. So how do 9 out of 10 people survive being struck? A ...

David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on "CBS Sunday Morning," where he's been a correspondent since 2002. Pogue hosts the CBS News podcast "Unsung Science." He's also a New York Times ...

Lightning could play an important role in flushing pollutants out of the atmosphere. Observations from a storm-chasing airplane reveal that lightning can forge lots of air-cleansing chemicals called ...

Half a million bolts of lightning hit the ground in Colorado each year. And when a thunderstorm is moving through southern Colorado, you'll see the First Alert 5 team showing you those lightning ...

Lightning has fascinated its observers since the beginning of human history. Those who painted the Lascaux cave walls in France approximately 20,000 years ago are believed to have represented it in ...

CHICAGO — More than electricity can illuminate a thundercloud. Brilliant bursts of gamma radiation, known as dark lightning or terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, also explode in lightning storms. And on ...

A thunderstorm with cloud to ground lightning rages during the day in China on July 21, 2025. CREDIT: Photo by Liu Wei/Xinhua via Getty Images. Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs ...