[wbeaty]

But lightning is where the gas has broken down, turning into plasma. Lightning is a growing conductor, like a motorized antenna on an oldschool car radio.

The growth of lightning is much like a growing metal dendrite-crystal.

Also, when lightning leaps rapidly upwards, the electrons INSIDE the lightning are flowing slowly downwards. The extending tip of a lightning-streamer is not an electric current, it's more like the moving tip of a growing fracture.