Analysis of irregular paths of lightning channels

The tortuosities of a number of lightning stroke channels have been measured by a method similar to that used for determining the scattering of the track of a nuclear particle. The distribution of the direction changes of sections of the channels are found to be Gaussian, and they appear to be characteristic of a noise variation of the channel direction. For cloud-to-ground strokes the magnitude of the noise appears to be largely independent either of section length or total length of channel or of the particular locale of the stroke.