What do you think of this fact?
The sun is basically the definition of hot. But an ordinary summer thunderstorm beats it, at least for the blink of an eye. Inside a lightning channel, the air is heated to around 30,000 °C almost instantly. The surface of the sun? Roughly 5,500 °C. That makes lightning about five times hotter.
Why the air gets so hot
Technically, lightning itself doesn’t have a temperature. It’s electrical charge on the move. What gets hot is the air it forces its way through. Air is a pretty lousy conductor of electricity, so when a massive amount of charge blasts through anyway, that narrow channel heats up like crazy.
The US National Weather Service puts it at about 50,000 °F and lands on the same comparison: roughly five times hotter than the surface of the sun.
It doesn’t last long, though. The main stroke is over in a tiny fraction of a second. What you see as one bolt is often several strokes in quick succession, which is why lightning seems to flicker.
Thunder is a heat blast
That sudden heat has a side effect you can actually hear. The superheated air expands explosively and creates a shock wave. That shock wave reaches you as thunder. A thunderstorm is basically a fireworks show made of electricity and overheated air.
You usually hear the thunder after you see the flash because light travels way faster than sound. The longer the gap, the farther away the storm.
When lightning strikes a tree, the water inside the wood can vaporize so fast that the bark blasts off or the trunk practically explodes.
The sun shines nonstop, while a lightning bolt lasts only an instant. But for that one instant, lightning wins.