system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5 how it can thunderstorm many times a week during the summer, but in the winter it doesn't at all. What gives?
gpt
A thunderstorm happens when warm and humid air rises up from the surface. As the air goes up it cools down, and water vapor starts condensing out of it, because cold air can’t hold as much water vapor as warm air. This condensation makes a cloud and at the same time releases energy, preventing the air in the cloud from cooling down too much, so it stays relatively warm and keeps rising. Even further up the condensed droplets of water freeze over and turn into ice particles, releasing some energy again. These particles hit each other and get an electrical charge, and then fall down to the surface, becoming water again, while the charge zaps to the ground or a different part of the same cloud (lightning). What we observe is a thunderstorm. Now for all this to happen there has to be enough water vapor in the rising air to begin with. And as already mentioned, cold air can’t hold as much water vapor as warm air in the first place. For this reason winter thunderstorms are much rarer than summer ones.