“Can lightning strike or travel through glass?” – John

In general, the answer here is no.

The goal of cloud-to-ground lightning is to find the path of least resistance to the ground, and glass is far from an easy route for lightning to take.

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Glass is an insulator, so there are typically lots of better options for routes for lightning to take to get to the ground as easily as possible.

There are kind of some caveats here.

People living in glass houses shouldn’t only not throw stones. They shouldn’t hang out during a thunderstorm, either.

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If there aren’t any better conductors available for a lightning strike to get from Point A to Point B or if the window is one of the unluckiest pieces of glass in the world, a window could end up getting struck. But lightning wouldn’t travel through that window… it would cause it to shatter or even explode.

In rare cases, lightning can even travel through cracks in the sides of windows of old homes, striking things and people inside.

Also, as a fun fact, lightning can make glass (or something similar, anyway). When lightning strikes silica-rich sand or rocks, temperatures reach over 53,000º F in an instant, melting the sand it travels through and forming a glass-like mineral known as fulgurite when it cools.

Sara Tonks is a content meteorologist with weather.com and has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Georgia Tech in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, along with a master’s degree from Unity Environmental University in Marine Science.