What are the benefits of thunderstorms?
This was quite an interesting paragraph I found: “Few stop to realize that thunderstorms, like most damaging weather phenomena, also produce sizable benefits to the environment and economy. Thunderstorms are essential to the environment and society, and one of their major blessings is the production of copious rainfall worth billions of dollars to the nation’s economy. Storms account for 47% of all precipitation east of the Rockies and 70% in southwestern U.S. The absence of thunderstorms, such as in the summer of 2005 in Illinois, led to $2 billion in crop losses and is often a key factor in droughts. Lightning converts gaseous nitrogen into compounds essential to plants, and lightning fixation accounts for 20% of the global total nitrogen deposited. Storms also maintain the global electrical circuit, transferring electrical charge from the atmosphere to the earth. Thunderstorms also play a significant role in the atmosphere’s chemistry with updrafts transporting pollutants aloft and
