You can also view previously answered questions in the HSW Question Archive . National Weather Service , approximately 1,800 thunderstorms are occurring at any given time, resulting in about 16-million thunderstorms each year. The two biggest threats associated with most thunderstorms are lightning and flash floods. To understand why thunderstorms occur more often during the warm months requires some understanding of thunderstorm basics.
Thunderstorms thrive under certain conditions.
The high humidity, in conjunction with warm temperatures, creates massive amounts of warm, moist air rising into the atmosphere, where it can easily form a thunderstorm. The basic idea is that thunder clouds can become giant Van de Graaff generators and create huge charge separations within the cloud. Let's look at how it works. Clouds contain millions and millions of water droplets and ice particles suspended in the air. As the process of evaporation and condensation occurs, these droplets collide with other moisture that is condensing as it rises.