Thunderstorm

Lightning during a thunderstorm.

File:LightningStrike.gif

A lightning bolt strikes a tree. A creeper can be seen walking through the woods; if it had been closer to the strike, it would have become charged.

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Thunderstorms are a somewhat common and dangerous weather condition.

Behavior

Thunderstorms are a semi-common temporary, global occurrence that can happen randomly at any time, within the Overworld. The exact type of precipitation during a thunderstorm varies depending on the temperature of the current biome, as well as the current altitude.

Thunderstorms may occur randomly, as rain or snow storms worsen. The average storm lasts 0.5 – 1 Minecraft day, and there is a 0.5 to 7.5 day delay between thunderstorms. They can be skipped entirely with the use of a bed, regardless of the time of day.

Effects

As with rain and snow, the sky is darkened and the sun, moon, and stars are no longer visible. Thunderstorms darken the world, causing light from the sky to decrease to a level of 10 in full daylight (however, brightness is closer to a level 11.5 and is tinted blue). The clouds darken from white to dark gray, although clouds themselves do not precipitate or create lightning. While the sun is not visible during rain, the glow associated with sunrise and sunset is still visible.

Unlike during regular rainstorms or snowstorms, the light level from the sky is treated as if it were 5 for the purposes of hostile mob spawning, which allows hostile mobs to spawn at any time of the day.

Lightning

Template:Entity Template:More info

Lightning is a lethal element to thunderstorms. Lightning momentarily increases the sky light's brightness to slightly greater than full daylight.

File:Lightning fire.png

The fire that a lightning bolt creates.

Lightning strikes randomly and creates fires where it strikes. Such fires act normally, igniting all flammable materials, detonating TNT, and even activating nether portals. The lightning itself, however, is not destructive and does not destroy blocks. While most fires are extinguished by the rain, areas that block rain can allow the fire to spread, and any netherrack lit by lightning is not extinguished by the rain.

Most entities struck by lightning are dealt Template:Hp damage (sometimes twice in succession) and are set on fire, which may cause additional damage.

If the player is killed by a lightning strike, the death message appears: "[player] was struck by lightning." This message does not display if the player was killed by the fire created by a lightning bolt.

Lightning may be manually summoned with the Template:Cmd command. It is summoned as an entity, and it can be referred to by commands or selectors.^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

File:SkeletonRiderGroup.png

A group of skeletal horsemen spawned during a thunderstorm.

File:Charged Creeper.png

Charged Creeper

Lightning is also spawned when a trident enchanted with Channeling is thrown and strikes a mob.

Effects on mobs

A lightning strike affects certain mobs differently:

• Lightning may randomly spawn a "Skeleton Trap" Horse with a chance of 0.75–1.5% chance on Easy, 1.5–4% on Normal, and 2.8125–6.75% on Hard, depending on the regional difficulty. A player triggers the trap by moving within 10 blocks of the horse, whereupon the horse transforms into four skeletal horsemen. A non-triggered trap horse despawns after 15 minutes.
• A pig struck by lightning turns into a zombie pigman.
• A creeper becomes charged.
• A villager gets replaced by a witch.
• A red mooshroom changes into a brown mooshroom and vice versa.^{[Java Edition and Bedrock Edition only]}
• If lightning kills a turtle, it drops 0-1 bowls instead of its normal drops.^{[Java Edition only]}
• Regardless of current health, lightning always instantly kills turtles.^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

Lightning mechanics

For each loaded chunk, every tick there is a ¹⁄_100,000 chance of an attempted lightning strike during a thunderstorm.

When lightning is to strike, random X and Z coordinates within the chunk are chosen, and the block just above the highest block that is liquid or obstructs movement is chosen for the lightning strike. Then if there are any living entities that can see the sky in a 3×h×3 region from 3 below the target block up to the world height, one such entity is selected at random and the lightning target is moved to the block the entity is standing in.

The target block is checked again for the following conditions:

• Target block can see the sky.
• Rain (not snow) is falling in the target block.
  • Thus, lightning does not naturally strike within cold biomes, or biomes where it does not rain (except in the Console Edition).

If these conditions pass, lightning strikes.

When lightning strikes, all entities within a 6×12×6 region horizontally centered on the northwest corner of the target block with the bottom edge 3 below the target block are struck by lightning. Multiple passes are made over this region, so items dropped during an earlier pass may be destroyed during a subsequent pass; damage immunity usually prevents struck mobs from taking more than Template:Hp damage. Non-solid blocks (such as redstone, torches, and snow layers) are not directly affected by lightning.

Thunder

Thunder is a sound event that occurs every time lightning strikes. Every player in the same world hears the thunder at the same time, regardless of distance from the strike.

The ability to hear thunder affects multiplayer, as it is possible to hear lightning strike at someone else's base or use a modded Minecraft client to determine the direction of every strike in the world the player is in. Using the direction of strikes, it is possible to triangulate the coordinates of lightning strikes.

Sounds

Sound	Subtitle	Namespaced ID	Subtitle ID	Source	Pitch	Volume	Attenuation distance
Template:Sound	Lightning strikes	entity.lightning_bolt.impact	subtitles.entity.lightning.impact	?	?	?	16
Template:Sound	Thunder roars	entity.lightning_bolt.thunder	subtitles.entity.lightning.thunder	?	?	?	16

History

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Trivia

• In Bedrock Edition, if the player leaves the world during a thunderstorm and rejoins, it would only be raining.
• Lightning, unlike other weather effects, does not have an image file associated with it. Thus, it is coded directly into the game engine, allowing for dynamic, realistic lightning.
• In Bedrock Edition, lightning strikes closer to the player more often than in Java Edition, due to spawn distance limits.
• If multiple lightning bolts strike a single villager at the same time, the number of witches spawned as a result is equal to the number of lightning bolts, making it possible, but extremely unlikely, to get multiple witches from one villager. This also works with pig-to-pigman transformations, but not creeper-to-charged transformations as the latter is just a change of state rather than a new entity creation.

Gallery

• The void during a lightning strike.

  The void during a lightning strike.

• Witches fighting during a thunderstorm.

  Witches fighting during a thunderstorm.