They appear as many branches, but only 1-2 branches will reach the ground. Approximately every 50 meters a new step leaves each leader and heads in a fairly random direction. If a leader gets 100m from the ground, positively charged streamers start rising from the closest grounded objects towards the negatively charged leader. FAST FACT You can judge how far away a lightning strike is by counting the seconds between a strike and the sound of the resulting thunder. Every 5 seconds is equal to about 1 mile.
Most ground strikes occur immediately below a cumulonimbus cloud.
These horizontal strikes are rare and unpredictable, so they shouldn't affect our decisions. Lightning tends to hit elevated sharp terrain features like mountain tops. Lightning tends to hit tall trees in open areas, with objects twice as high receiving roughly 4X the strikes. Lightning tends to hit bushes in the desert if the bush is sticking up higher than the flat ground around it. Lightning can still hit flat ground or water, but more randomly than it hits elevated objects.