The Espinhaço Range in central-eastern Brazil was chosen by the authors as the study subject for the present research. It represents a typical site for orographic thunderstorms, which develop from the forced ascent of conditionally unstable air along the mountain barrier. Rocks exposed at the earth's surface undergo weathering. The loosing and removal of rock materials by any process, the erosion, is more effective at elevations (e.g. mountain ranges), providing thus the source of debris and resulting in the formation of soils. Atmospheric discharges have very peculiar features: Velocities of 160.000 km/sec and plasma temperatures of 30.000°C are achieved in nanoseconds in lightning channels. The authors introduced the term "Electromechanical-Disintegration" (ED) for damage of minerals and rocks on the earth's surface due to lightning. Evidence are: Presence of b-quartz (T > 573°C, called "Flashstones" by local diggers); melted barbed wires (T > 1500°C); furrows in soils and colluvium up to 100 m long with the presence of cristobalite, the high temperature modification of quartz. (1470-1713°C). In permeable Precambrian quartzites the instantaneous shock rise of temperature from 15 to over 1500°C results in an extremely severe explosion like expansion of water, leading to the formation of fissures and widening of other systems. The enormous pressure of about 35 kbar can be estimated by the presence of coesite relicts, the rare high pressure polymorph of quartz. The ED is one of the more important starting mechanism for other weathering processes, because chemical agents can attack each newly made fragment from all sides and can descend even deeper into bedrock as new cracks are formed or older one extends. Thus, the ED is a new term for a type of weathering as old as the planet's lithosphere and represents an important exogenic process for the beginning of erosion and the formation of soils.