lightning

[low_delta]

I saw/heard the most amazing thing. I was looking up as a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. You know how it takes an instant from start to finish? And then it takes a few seconds for the sound to reach you? As the bolt streaked across the sky, it made bigger flashes at every bend (which was a lot). And with these flashes there were simultaneous snapping noises. And then it took three or four seconds for the thunder to hit me. I wonder what happened to make that sound travel at the speed of light. Or seem to.

Comments

[sunshine-two.livejournal.com]

Supposedly, you can tell the distance the lightening is away from you by counting between the time the lightening shows, and the sound becomes obvious.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

If I remember right, it's three seconds per mile. And that one was only a mile up.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Okay, five seconds per mile.

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[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

Five seconds per mile, but what you were seeing was an optical illusion. The snapping noises were from further back on the lightning, and it was coincidental that they seemed to coincide with the new bends in the bolt.

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[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. Even if they were a little farther back on the bolt, I heard them while it was stil lin the air, and not three or four seconds later with the rest of the thunder.

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[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

Maybe the leading edge of the lightning was closer to you, or maybe the sound you heard was from the lightning hidden in the clouds, before it became visible. It's not possible that you could have heard and seen it at the same time unless the lightning was within a fifth of a mile of you (which is possible...distances are deceiving with lightning). It's possible, too, that the sound you heard wasn't coming from that lightning bolt. It might have been static crackling from the air right near you.

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[low-delta.livejournal.com]

The sound I heard came at exactly the same time I saw the lighting that made it. That electrical snapping sound happened at the same time as the little bursts of energy that appeared atthe knuckles of the lightning bolt. And the sound came from that direction.
It's possible that the bolt had some effect on the atmosphere, such as causing the electricity to flow near to me, and causing some discharge in the air nearer to me. Something strange happened with it, and I don't know what, but I certainly heard it at the same time that it happened.

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[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

I wish I could remember exactly, but I have this feeling that the rumble of thunder which we usually hear is the sound bouncing and rolling off the ground. Maybe the crackling sounds are the actual sounds the lightning makes, and the rolling thunder noise you heard took longer to reach you because it's bouncing off the ground? In which case, maybe you heard the sounds immediately because the lightning was really close?

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[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I was just saying to Cyn that I thought that thunder makes the rolling sound because the initial clap is echoing off of other clouds. I'm not sure what other factors there are. I hear close ones that just make one single loud boom, so I think that a thunderclap is the direct result of the lightning bolt. And the snapping sound wasn't very loud.

[emschin.livejournal.com]

This discussion is so interesting. I think I'll do some reading on clouds and thunder and lightning.