Afraid Of The Ground?

[Darin Brunin]

Last night I shot this photo in which the lightning bolt went towards the ground but it seemed that the earth's surface wasnt a good enough conductor as the bolt went back up into the sky. I am no expert on lightning and wondering what the cause of this would be and if this occurs more frequently than I thought it did. It looks like it had to of skimmed the ground.

 

[Dan Robinson]

While I have seen some seemingly ground-dragging intracloud channels, I think a lot of it has to do with our perspective. Particularly in stratiform precip regions where the electrical region tends to be more 'transparent', allowing more of the lightning channel to be visible, revealing its '3d' structure.