Well, around 4 billionyearsago, theoceansformedas a resultoftheEarth's outgassingandcometbombardment, asthesolarsystemwasstillquiteyoungandfullofdebris.
Electronswithin a cloudrepeatedlystreamandpull, branchingandsplittinginto a stepleader.
As a delta-2 lowersandpullsontheground, asthesurplusofnegativeenergygetswithin, say, 10 to 100 metersoftheground, streamers, orweaklyluminousplasmafilaments, arelaunchedtowardthestepleaderfromanyground-basedobject.