Why doesn't lightning stop when it starts raining? According to my understanding, lightning happens because the clouds get charged due to friction from the moving clouds and the ground gets polarized by the nearby charged clouds. And the two opposite charges cause a huge electric field in between them that's strong enough to break down an insulator like air itself which we call lightning.
My question is: When it starts raining (since water is a conductor), won't the water droplets start forming a circuit between the cloud and the ground carrying current between them? If so, won't this rain start draining charge from the clouds reducing the potential difference in air, therefore preventing lightning? And does that mean the chances of lightning decrease with heavy rain and increase with light drizzles? And since our bodies can tolerate small amounts of current, is this current in rain going unnoticed by us?
I have heard people argue on the internet that corona discharges from lightning rods can prevent lightning. But the answers on Stack Exchange declared that the effect is negligible and that the rods help only in attracting lightning by providing a shorter route to ground. Is the same true for rain? In the case of rods, it's just one rod, but thats not the case with rain. So is the effect still negligible? Because in my experience I have never seen lightnings disappear once the rain starts pouring. Can someone explain why?
 A: Lightning generally initiates within a cloud or similar structure, due to charge buildup on its various constituents. Many lightning bolts pass harmlessly across the sky. The ground-sky static field can augment the local field and draw the leader downwards until it meets the ground.
Rain has little effect. Consider scattering iron filings loosely on a sheet of paper and connecting a battery either side. The filings cannot conduct electricity across the sheet because they are not touching. Nor are they close enough together to arc across. Nor do they make an effective dielectric to turn the contacts into a capacitor, or anything like that. So it is with raindrops in the sky. What rain can do is to carry charge down to the ground and so, during the storm, slowly reduce the ground-sky potential a little. But again, the only effect of that is to reduce the downward attraction of bolts already under way.
Similarly, corona discharges on lighting rods are at the wrong end of the lightning bolt and have no effect on its initiation. The rod itself does intensify the field, sometimes enough to create a corona discharge, and can attract any lightning that is already on its way down and very close by, but it does not affect initiation. In general the current to ground is so vast that the earthing strip offers little protection. It is better not to have a rod or strip, so as not to attract the lightning towards the target in the first place.
