Lightning Is About Five Times Hotter Than the Surface of the Sun

Lightning is far hotter than most people would guess. The US National Weather Service states that lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which it describes as five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. Two details in that sentence are worth noticing. First, the temperature refers to the air along the path of the lightning, which is what the flash heats. Second, the comparison is with the surface of the Sun, not with the Sun as a whole. The inside of the Sun is very much hotter than its surface. NASA gives the temperature of the Sun’s core as about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, so the claim would not hold for the core.