Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-25409224-20140913064011/@comment-24649454-20141014125941

If you check the manga instead of the anime, you'll see that in chapter 390 when Amaterasu is used there are no storm clouds and they don't start to form until Dragon Flame Jutsu is used. That makes sense as Amaterasu was never at a high enough altitude to affect the air pressure at the level of cloud formation even if it would have been hot enough. Anyhow, natural lightning can have it's power increased by increasing it's static charge from various means such as magnetic plasma, polarised light refraction integrating with the Earth's magnetic field and high changes in temperature and pressure in the area of the cloud formation as to increase its charge capacity, all of which I can't be bothered to explain as it involves a lot of advanced-ish Physics. In short, more moist air, higher pressure differences and more heat INSIDE the area of cloud formation (unlike Amaterasu) result in larger storm clouds which in turn create stronger lightning. Also, fun fact, lightning travels at roughly 6,000,000 metres/second, which is 224,000 mph so yh, no one's dodging that :P