Lightning Striking Water

I wonder if anyone can help me out with a lightning dilemma that has me stumped. The question is simply: When lightning strikes water, what happens? Does it radiate outward in a circular fashion until it finds land, then becomes linear again? Does it travel through the water until it hits the water bottom? Or does it just dissipate? Also, what effect would water salinity have?
Thank you for you help in this matter,
tmegeney

 

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tmegeney,
I have seen lighting strike water at about 200 yards away at night. Quite a sight to catch, expecially a large bolt. Looked someone took a carbon arc search light and turned it down into the water. The light did spread out in a ball. The was another time when I was a kid. In the summer I used to take my bike to a lake and spend the day there. Every day I did this. One day came a summer thunderstorm from which a bolt of lightning hit the lake probably 500 yards away. I felt the tingle of that one because I had not gotten out of the water for the storm. I do now. Maybe this helps you in what you ask.

 

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Have you ever thought about how lightning, and any other spark, is jagged? Not in a straight line? It takes the path of least resistance, which is part of how lightning "chooses" where to strike. Once it hits the water, it may in fact be similar to a ball, but in a way, it is different. It will be following multiple path of least resistance, in all directions, basically dissipating.
Meaning, if you had been closer to where the lightning had struck, you would have felt quite a bit more

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With regard to salinity:

Actually, pure water is a very poor conductor (it's a pretty good insulator). It's the dissolved salts (ions) that make water conductive. What usually happens when you put some electrodes into salty water and run current through it, is that the negative ions will swim toward the anode while the positive toward the cathode. There the ions acquire/give up electrons and cease to be ions (they precipitate out of the solution, typically right onto the electrodes.) So actually the electricity isn't "traveling" through the water the way electrons flow through a wire; instead the movable/precipitatable ions provide a temporary simulation of a link between the electrodes. As the ions continue to precipitate, the salinity of the water in the local region dwindles and the amount of conducted current becomes less and less.

I imagine when lightning hits water it leaves in its wake trails of de-ionized suspended particles. Much like a fireworks rocket leaves smoke trails in the air after it bursts. The trails then get smeared out by currents and brownian motion...