There is very little atmospheric current otherwise the 400v/m altitude potential would deplete. I'm pretty sure the dominant theory now is that discharge occurs primarily through lightning. The thing about Ampere's law (adopted by Maxwell), is that without current there is no magnetic field. So I'd expect disruptive magnetic fields to be associated with lighting. If the separation of charges constituted enough current to create a magnetic attraction resulting in a vortex then I'd expect all storms to rotate in the same direction since the down direction to earth ground are the same. But southern hemisphere storms rotate CW and northern storms rotate CCW.
It's not lightning blowing up those transformers, I've lived through enough hurricanes to see it happen spontaneously, implying inductance.
Those are mostly power flashes from short circuits caused by wind.
Imagine what happens when the solar wind hits earth directly, the pressure, alone causes a change in our atmosphere, then the interaction with the magnetic field, causes further interaction. The planet has passed the longest day and is now descending, from here until December the days get shorter and shorter. The planet receives less direct radiation from the sun meaning the air is cooler and thus increases in density, this increases mixing of upper atmosphere air, a lot of which interacts with solar charged particles. Charge and magnetism are coupled, thus static electric energy transfer between the ionosphere and trophosphere increases as a result of air mixing due to changing seasons.
(post is archived)