Not to be confused with Lighting

Lightning during a thunderstorm.

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

Thunderstorms are a somewhat common and dangerous weather condition.

Behavior [ edit ]

Thunderstorms are a semi-common temporary, global occurrence[1] 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 0.5–7.5 day delay between thunderstorms. They can be skipped entirely with the use of a bed, regardless of the time of day. Sleeping in a bed also resets the in-game thunderstorm timer, making a thunderstorm right after sleeping unlikely. This means the best way to wait for a thunderstorm would be to go without sleeping for several days, as sleeping every Minecraft day would minimize the chance of a thunderstorm occurring.

Effects [ edit ]

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 [ edit ]

Lightning Bolt

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

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, soul sand, or soul soil lit by lightning is not extinguished by the rain.

Most entities struck by lightning are dealt 5 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 /summon lightning_bolt command. It is summoned as an entity, and it can be referred to by commands or selectors.

A group of skeletal horsemen spawned during a thunderstorm.

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

Effects on mobs [ edit ]

A lightning strike affects certain mobs differently:

Lightning mechanics [ edit ]

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 5 damage. Non-solid blocks (such as redstone, torches, and snow layers) are not directly affected by lightning.

Thunder [ edit ]

Minecraft Dungeons enchantment, see "Thunder" redirects here. For theenchantment, see MCD:Thundering

Thunder is a sound event that occurs every time lightning strikes. Every player within the 160 thousand blocks and the same dimension hears the thunder.

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 [ edit ]

This page would benefit from the addition of more sounds. Please remove this notice once you've added suitable sounds to the article. The specific instructions are: is there a specific sound event tied to skeleton traps? also should we include channelling here?

Sound Subtitle Source Description Namespaced ID Translation key Volume Pitch Attenuation

distance Sound parameters Volume Pitch Attenuation

distance Stream Preload https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Explosion1.ogg https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Explosion2.ogg https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Explosion3.ogg https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Explosion4.ogg Lightning strikes ? ? entity.lightning_bolt.impact subtitles.entity.lightning.impact ? ? 16 ? ? ? ? ? https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Thunder1.ogg https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Thunder2.ogg https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Thunder3.ogg Thunder roars ? ? entity.lightning_bolt.thunder subtitles.entity.lightning.thunder ? ? infinite ? ? ? ? ?

Data values [ edit ]

ID [ edit ]

Java Edition:

Name Namespaced ID Translation key Lightning Bolt lightning_bolt entity.minecraft.lightning_bolt

Bedrock Edition:

Name Namespaced ID Numeric ID Translation key Lightning Bolt lightning_bolt 93 entity.lightning_bolt.name

Entity data [ edit ]

Lightning bolts have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Entity data Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template

Entity data

History [ edit ]

Issues [ edit ]

Issues relating to "Lightning" or "Thunder" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia [ edit ]

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.

Gallery [ edit ]

The void during a lightning strike.

Witches fighting during a thunderstorm.