A few seconds later, you hear a sharp click or loud crack from lightning channels a little farther away, and several tens of seconds later the thunder from the most distant part of a flash has quieted to low frequency rumbling.īecause light travels through the air roughly a million times faster than sound does, you can use thunder to estimate the distance to lightning. Very close to lightning, the first thunder you hear is from the closest channels,which produce a tearing sound, because that thunder contains high frequencies. Thunder can be heard up to 25 miles away from the lightning discharge, but the frequency of the sound changes with distance from the lightning channels that produce it, because higher frequencies are more quickly absorbed by the air. The huge pressure in the initial outward shock wave decreases rapidly with increasing distance and within ten yards or so has become small enough to be perceived as the sound we call thunder.
What causes thunder? Lightning causes thunder! Energy from a lightning channel heats the air briefly to around 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than the surface of the sun. What we do: Read more about NSSL's lightning research here. It can be seen in volcanic eruptions, extremely intense forest fires, surface nuclear detonations, heavy snowstorms, in large hurricanes, and obviously, thunderstorms. Lightning is one of the oldest observed natural phenomena on earth. Lightning can occur between opposite charges within the thunderstorm cloud (intra-cloud lightning) or between opposite charges in the cloud and on the ground (cloud-to-ground lightning). The flash of lightning temporarily equalizes the charged regions in the atmosphere until the opposite charges build up again. When the opposite charges build up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down and there is a rapid discharge of electricity that we know as lightning. In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground. Watch on the NOAA Weather Partners YouTube Channel» What is lightning? Lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere between clouds, the air, or the ground.
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