Static electricity

Without flowing anywhere charge carriers, specially electrons can build up on anything.  Anyone can experience this charge storage when he/she walks on a carpeted floor in winter or in a dry place where humidity is low. When charges forms on body, an excess of shortage of electrons makes your body to be charged positively of negatively. This charge formation or storage is called static electricity.

This type of electricity is called static as they don't move  like other type of electricity (AC or DC). If the carrier body or thing touches or comes across some metallic body then a discharge happens with a spark. The body or object seems to jump during the discharge. It is the static discharge which makes it happen. 

We see lightning occurring at a  stormy day or night. Lightning might occur between clouds, or between clouds and ground in the atmosphere. This lightning is nothing but a magnified version of static electric discharge. Before the lightning happens, there is a static charge in the clouds, between different clouds of parts of clouds. In the following figure cloud to cloud (A) and cloud to ground (B) static charge build ups are shown. At figure (A) when two different clouds come sufficiently close to each other then the static discharge happens and lightning occurs. In case of (B) the positive charge in the earth attracts the negative charges of cloud and then discharge happens.

The interesting thing is that, the current flow in a lightning stroke is very high. Its about several tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, of amperes. But this huge current can't do that much damage as it lasts for only a fraction of second.