A flash of lightning usually happens in the blink of an eye. It’s amazing to watch, but it can be hard to get a sense of what it really looks like because it happens so fast.
In order to observe the trajectory of a lightning bolt, researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology decided to record a lightning storm at an amazing 7000 frames per second using a high speed camera.
In the video below, they’ve captured a lightning storm that occurred on May 20 near the their campus. The footage shows lightning creeping towards the ground, branching out as it descends, and finally exploding in a blinding flash when it makes contact with the earth.