06/10/2026
As a kid, when there was a spring or summer thunderstorm, I recall my siblings and I would seek out our Dad, the 4th generation to farm the land we called home. Weād usually find him on the back stoop or front porch, wordlessly and quietly listening to the rain and the thunder roll while the lightning flashed. We were all safely doing this, by the way, but looking back it seemed we all found it fascinating. And as an adult, I perhaps understand more fully the multiple reasons for fascination.
One of those is that during a thunderstorm, the soil receives a dose of natural fertilizer through atmospheric nitrogen fixation. The extreme energy of lightning splits stable nitrogen molecules in the air, binding them with oxygen to form nitrates. As the rain falls down, it then washes these nitrates directly into the ground.
The process could be called Nature's Fertilizer Factory or more accurately a natural nitrate infusion. Because the atmospheric nitrogen (Nā) is bound too tightly for plants to use, lightning acts as a massive spark that converts it into usable nitrates (NOā). Called the "Greening" Effect, the rain acts as a delivery system, soaking this free nitrogen into the roots. This triggers a rapid burst of lush, green, leafy growth in not only the fields, but lawns and gardens in the days after a storm. It helps those little critters living in the soil, too, by āwaking upā beneficial soil microbes and bacteria that cycle nutrients and make the soil even more fertile.
I still love watching a storm, it reminds me of so much. Not just nostalgically but scientifically, highlighting in dramatic fashion the real marvel that we call nature and how it affects the world of agriculture.
