I mean current flow or more exactly electrons flow when the circut is closed but when lightening strikes there isn’t any closed circuit so shouldn’t there be positively charged particles out there and if there are then how do they become neutral again?
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it’s not really about “closing a circuit”, the point is a bit different.
to have a current flow what you need is a “difference in potential” if there is a difference the current will flow from high potential to low (think it like a river that goes from high to low point), for example if you have two atoms like this:
+– and + one electron will be attracted to the other side and will become +- and +-.
a closed circuit and a battery/generator is necessary to keep this difference in potential that otherwise vanish immediatly.
when we talk about lighting we have ground and sky at two different potentials.
another important point is that the air normally is an electrical insulator (so no current flow) but if the potential becomes high enough air gets ionized and air becomes conductive, you need about 1kV per mm to break air as insulator, when a lighting occours it rebalance the charge and the lighting stop.
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