This video visualizes results obtained by a small-scale transport model of electrical discharge formation in a thundercloud. The model discharge tree is a dynamic graph, nodes and edges of which are capacitive and conductive elements, respectively, electrical parameters of which vary with time. In the framework of the used approach, a heated well-conducting lightning leader channel is formed by combining the currents of tens of thousands of streamers, each of which initially has a negligible conductivity and a temperature, which does not differ from the ambient value. The model leader has electrical characteristics, which are intermediate between the laboratory long spark and the developed lightning channel, which is expected for an “immature” lightning leader.

Source code of the model is avaliable at https://github.com/DAlexis/self-organizing-transport-model