As a spectacular low-precipitation (LP) supercell continued to spin away into the deepening nightfall, it occasionally erupted with a wonderful lightning display. The first was cloud-to-air, this one cloud-to-ground. The stroke here originated atop the visual vault region of the storm: a notoriously productive area for lightning thanks to the intense air motions, rapid charge separation, and intermingling of ice and supercooled liquid phases of precipitation that happen up there. Along the way down, a branch of the step leader had tickled the edge of the rotating cloud column with a flick of electricity, lit up brilliantly once the ground surge ignited both the main channel and all its branches.
1 E Joy TX (7 Apr 8) Looking WNW
33.5762, -98.2014