The average lightning bolt is about 5 miles long and how wide?

The average lightning bolt is about 5 miles long and how wide?

While lightning bolts can appear quite wide and expansive in photographs due to the intense light they emit, the actual conductive channel of an average lightning bolt is surprisingly narrow. Typically, a lightning bolt is only about 1 inch (2.5 to 3 centimeters) in diameter, which is roughly the width of a human thumb or a pencil. This extremely thin channel carries an immense amount of electrical current, heating the air around it to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.

The perception of a lightning bolt being much wider comes from the “halo” effect created by the intensely heated air and the way our eyes and cameras capture the incredibly bright flash. The energy released by the bolt causes the surrounding air to glow, making the apparent width much larger than the narrow, superheated plasma channel that is the lightning bolt itself. So, despite their dramatic visual appearance, the destructive power of a lightning bolt is concentrated within a very small, incredibly hot core.

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7S0ovbNTdo

https://www.threads.com/@heavyweightwriting/post/DJ305I_zY7n