Lightning is one of the most extreme natural electrical phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere, and its temperature is genuinely extraordinary — but it must be understood correctly and precisely. A typical lightning bolt heats the air inside its channel to around 25,000–30,000°C. For comparison, the visible surface of the Sun (the photosphere) has an average temperature of about 5,500°C. This means the air inside a lightning channel can briefly become several times hotter than the Sun’s surface — not b