Weather Imagery

How exactly lightning forms is still open for debate. The most commonly accepted theory is that electrons are stripped off colliding ice particles caught in a thunderstorm’s updraft. Once these particles lose an electron, their net remaining charge becomes positive. These positively charged particles will rise high into the upper most part of the thunderstorm where they tend to collect. Conversely, other particles in the cloud acquire an electron after the collision and as a result, their net remaining charge is negative. The negatively charged particles tend to collect at the base of the cloud.

How and why the charge separation occurs is poorly understood. In any case, the positive charge is separated from the negative charge which in turn creates an electric field. When this electric field “short circuits”, a lightning bolt is generated. Although lightning comes in all different shapes, sizes and sometimes color there are only two types of lightning; negative and positive discharges.

Negative Lightning

As more and more positive charge builds in the upper part of the storm and on the ground beneath the storm, more and more negative charge builds in the lower part of the cloud. The charge separation creates an electric field. As the charge continues to build, so does the attraction between the positively and negatively charged particles. The only thing stopping the electric current from flowing is air, which happens to be a very good insulator. This allows an immense amount of charge to build up. Eventually, the insulating factor of the air will be overcome and a discharge will occur.

If this occurs inside the cloud it is called intra-cloud lightning which accounts for about 75% of all lightning produced by a thunderstorm. If the discharge hits the ground, it’s called a cloud-to-ground strike. In either case, when a sufficient electrical potential, or charge separation overcomes the insulating factor of the air, a lighting strike occurs and electrons flow. These are examples of negative lightning because electrons flow towards the positive charge.

Positive Lightning

There is another type of lightning that is far more powerful, one in which positive charge flows instead of electrons. It’s called positive lightning and it’s a very real thing. Only about 5% of lightning is positive in nature and tends to occur during the peak of a severe thunderstorm or as the storm is decaying. Most positive strikes originate high in the anvil head of a thunderstorm where the positive charge tends to accumulate. However, instead of discharging with the negative charge at the base of the cloud, it travels outside the cloud and strikes the ground where there’s a pool of negative charge.

No one really knows what causes a positive strike, but a few things are for certain. They tend to be about 5 times more powerful than a negative strike, last about 10 times longer, strike several miles away from the storm (“bolt from the blue”), and produce huge amounts of ELF and VLF radio waves. It’s commonly believed that positive strikes are responsible for most forest fires and extensive damage to electrical grids.

When we had our house built, DR Horton installed the crappiest windows possible. To make matters worse, the windows were installed poorly and rain water leaked down through the walls causing quite a headache. I waited 6 months for them to come out and replace the windows the first time. Well, the second time they leaked I decided to take matters into my own hands. No, I didn’t take them to court. The money I would of spent in court fighting them to replace the crappy windows with the same crappy window was instead used to buy brand new windows. Top quality windows.

For the second test, he pulled out a 300 BTU thermal lamp to simulate the sun (the kind you would find in a bathroom to warm you up). He put a single pane window in front of the lamp and the BTU meter read 280. Virtually no change. He then put a double-pane window in front of the lamp and the meter dropped a bit further to 220. Then he put a triple-pane argon filled window and it dropped considerably to about 120 BTU’s. For the final test, he put the Champion Window in front of the heat lamp and the meter dropped to an amazing 40 BTU’s! I was really impressed. You could barely feel the heat through the window.

For those interested, the specifications on the windows were as follows: Double-pane, argon-filled, vinyl frame, double-glazed Low-E, 0.29 UV, 0.31 SHGC, 0.55 Visible Transmittance, 0.005 Air Infiltration. They also come with a lifetime warranty for anything that goes wrong. And I mean anything. If my son puts a baseball through the window, it’s covered. You only have to pay a $45 service fee, and that’s it.

The windows were a bit pricey. As an example (call them to set up an appointment and take measurements) our 42″x36″ double-slider cost about $1,300. They have specials going on all the time, especially in the winter right around January.

The windows are very well made. They use thick vinyl for solid construction and the interior portion of the frame is foam filled. Both the windows and the screen slide back and forth for easy cleaning and also eliminates the need to remove it. The windows themselves slide very smoothly in their tracks with very little effort. They roll on bearing wheels and don’t simply slide on a vinyl insert.

Since the windows are custom made, it took about 1 month before they were ready. The installers were very nice and did a very thorough job. It took them about 6 hours to install five windows which considering the amount of work involved, was actually pretty good. About half way through the installation, a representative from Champion Windows came by to make sure everything was going OK. We were very impressed.

It’s been about a week since the windows were installed and we have noticed a big difference in our family room. In the past, with the thermostat set at 68°F, the room would get to at most 68°F but would then quickly fall back down to 63°F or lower. With the new windows, the room stays at about 69°F and can hover around 73°F if the rest of the house needs heating. So we are seeing an increase of about 8°F.