According to the phylogenetic tree diagram, modern birds are most closely related to?
Does lightning travel from the earth to the sky, or from the sky downward? Lightning travels both ways. Lightning is a huge electrical discharge that results from vigorous motions that occur in thunderstorms. Lightning can travel from cloud to cloud, within the same cloud, or between the cloud and ground. In-cloud lightning discharges are more common than cloud-to-ground discharges and are not as hazardous. Cloud-to-ground is the best known type of lightning and it poses the greatest risk.
The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up. A typical cloud-to-ground flash lowers a path of negative electricity (that we cannot see) towards the ground in a series of spurts. Objects on the ground generally have a positive charge.