Have you ever noticed how plants and grass looks greener after a thunderstorm? Your eyes are not decieving you! Lightning helps deliver usable nitrogen to the plants root system. The atmosphere on Earth is 78% nitrogen, but it is not available to plants in this form. The electrical energy caused by a lightning strike breaks the nitrogen bond, then quickly attaches to oxygen, goes through a chemical process and is then dissolved in rain drops that fall to the Earth in the form