LIGHTNING TRIVIA:

Lightning can strike up to 20 Miles away from a thunderstorm.
When you see Lightning in the distance on a hot day, but, you don't hear thunder, that's because, there is a storm a long ways away. Too far for you to see the rain clouds or hear the thunder. This makes it look like the lighting is being caused by the heat. People often think it is the heat that is causing the lighting. It's often referred to as "Heat Lightning". But, Heat Lightning does not exist. It is regular lightning from a storm that's too far away for you to see the rain or hear the thunder.
Lightning strikes the Earth between 50 and 100 times per second! Astronauts have confirmed that as fact, because they can see the clouds light up in several different places around the world, all at the same time. They can see it from the space station.
Lightning can travel in all directions, most Lightning is cloud to cloud lightning and it doesn't hit the ground. On the ground it can travel straight down, up, or sideways. According to the Discovery Channel and some high speed video footage of lightning strikes, which you can see on YouTube, most Lightning travels from the ground up, NOT down from the clouds!
Lightning has between 1 Million and 1 Billion Volts.
In the movie: Back To The Future, they use the the word: "Jigowatt". There is no such thing as a Jigowatt. The actors mispronounced the word: "Gigawatt". Just like the computer term, Gigabyte- 1 Billion bytes, a Gigawatt is 1 Billion Watts.
When people get struck by lightning, they usually don't get hit directly by the bolt, usually, the lighting hits something else, if someone is touching the object that got hit, they get zapped. It can also "splash", or bounce off something it hits and hit someone. Sometimes, it hits the wet ground several feet away and if a person is standing on the ground near the strikes, electricity travels across the wet ground and hits them.
The record for the most times being struck by lightning lightning is 7 times! It was a park ranger. He lived to tell about it! However, he had Psychological and physical health problems after being struck that many times.
The lighting capital of the word as of 2016, according to NASA.gov, is: Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. They get an avg of 233 lightning strikes per square Km every year.
Before NASA researched this, The Congo Basin in Africa held the record for the most Lightning activity each year.
NASA conducted their research with: "The Lighting Image Sensor" (LIS) on the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission.
The lighting capital of the US is Tampa, FL. They have more Lightning than any US city. The word Tampa comes from the Clausa Tribe in the 16th century. The word Tampa means: "Sticks of Fire".
The Lighting Belt is an area of FL that extends from Tampa to Orlando and from Orlando down to Ft Myers and Lake Okeechobee. That  area of FL gets the most Lightning each year.
Lightning can generate heat up to 60,000 degrees F. That's 6 times hotter than the surface of the Sun!
Lightning kills more people than Hurricanes and Tornadoes combined every year.
NASA is not supposed to launch rockets through clouds, because, that could trigger lightning. However, I have seen them do it and the rockets did not cause lightning. Not the ones I saw.
Most commercial airplanes get struck by lightning at least once or more every year. Because of all the safety features on airplanes  to protect the plane and passengers from lightning, most people don't even know that the airplane was struck by lightning. In fact, planes can even trigger lightning.
Experts say that if lightning hits your car while you're in it, you should be safe. The force of the lighting will be absorbed by the outer frame of the car and you, theoretically, should not be affected by it. Unless you stick your arm out the window and touch something else that is touching the ground, then you'll get fried.
Lightning can be produced by other things besides rain, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, rockets and sometimes even a huge fire, which can also cause a fire tornado. That is a whirlwind caused by a fire. It sucks up the flame. Now the tornado is spinning around and it is actually spinning a flame around with it! Making it even more dangerous.l
Some other planets have storms on them and some of them also produce lightning. Jupiter has some of the most violent storms  in the Solar system. According to NASA, Lightning on Jupiter is much more powerful than what we experience on Earth.
(Most of this information comes from: Discovery Channel, NASA.gov, Orlandosentinel.com and Scientificamerican.com.)