An eyewitness managed to take special and spectacular photos in Guatemala this week. They show the lightning shooting into the sky from the 3760 meter high Volcán de Agua. However, this was not a so-called volcanic thunderstorm, as the volcano has been dormant since the mid-16th century.
It was a normal thunderstorm, except in this case the lightning seems to come from inside Volcán de Agua. Most thunderstorms shoot down from the clouds to the ground. In rare cases, however, discharges also form in the opposite direction, as in this case.
Lightning has certainly struck the top of the stratovolcano near the city of Antigua several times, but in this case it acted as a launching pad for upward and radially diverging Monday lightning.
The volcanic thunderstorms mentioned at the beginning, on the other hand, form in the eruption clouds of a volcano. Especially if they rise unusually fast, ie the gas pressure of the explosion is particularly high. The friction of the ash particles creates an electric field that eventually discharges into lightning.
Source: Krone
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