system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 : Why do Lightning Strikes come down as a Zig Zag line but not a straight line?
gpt
Lightning follows the path of least resistance. There are typically air pockets, which are regions of higher or lower density than the surrounding area due to various factors - basically turbulence. This changes the resistance of the air that the lightning has to travel through in order to reach the relatively positively charged ground, or in some cases, another cloud.

Lightning doesn’t know where to go, hence why it may sometimes appear to branch out. At the end of the day, it’s just the flow of electricity from a higher electron density region to one that is lower.