Lightning on Mt Everest?
 Does lightning strike the top of Mt. Everest?
Teddy, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Mount Everest, elevation: 29,055 feet (8850 meters), the highest mountain on
Earth. Photo courtesy of mnteverest.net, ©1999, used with permission.
"Your reader asks a very insightful, excellent
question," says
Hugh Christian, Chief Scientist for
NASA's satellite lightning detection system, which
covers Earth. (My reader, Teddy, is ten years old.)
Many of us have seen lightning strike the
mountaintop above. We huddle under a tarp in the
driving rain and watch from a ridge below. That's
close enough. Sure, lightning strikes mountain tops,
but does it strike tall mountains--Mount Everest, up 29,035 feet (8850 m) in the sky?
Thunderstorms grow above 60,000 feet (18 000 m) and observers have seen lightning coming out of their
tops, says Christian. That's twice as high as Everest, so elevation is not a problem. The
mountain, however, is.
NASA's detection system does record significant lightning in the Tibet plateau, up to about 7,000
feet (2 000 m. But none along the high Tibetan mountains. Mount Everest doesn't get hit by lightning or,
at least, the satellites haven't seen any.
Christian speculates tall mountains change the whole development of clouds and suspects the
clouds rain out as they go up the mountain. He'd also like Teddy to participate and investigate
these phenomena.
Further Reading:
mnteverest.net
Photos of Mount Everest
Learning from Lightning, About the lightning detection system, Science@NASA
Understanding lightning, USATODAY.com Weather
(Answered February 21, 2001, updated
July 23, 2007)
| 
