We continue to have lightning after the rain had finally stopped on us yesterday, for about 1/2 hour or more, one just above our heads. Last night in Succotz there was a horrific electrical storm from 1:30 to 3 am. Strobe lightning, rolling thunder, thunder bolts and lightning bolts, and rain of course.
These swellups, are due to unstable, humid air. Yesterday, the temperatures got rather hot, this caused several swellups to occur. The hot humid air rises, as it rises, it cools slightly, causing the high humidity to condense out, which forms into clouds, but in doing so, releases heat, which then causes it to continue rising, and in these cases, due to the large areas, they go up and up, and helped by the SW high level winds, which are also humid.
It is air moving up, against other areas of air, that result in the clouds charging up, and causing the lightning strikes. Lightning is about air rubbing against air, not about rain. . . But usually such rapid air rising, causing lightning will also cause rain, as we had early this morning. One strike sounded as if it was only 100 feet away from me, but did not knock out our power, but one later, cause the power to briefly trip, shutting down my computer, which is on a 3 minute re-set time delay protection.
You can see the swelling up of the cloud in this picture just north of the Yucatan, right now.