There are few things more intense than being directly under a thunderstorm, feeling the lightning and thunder in your chest as it passes above you. But so many people don’t actually understand what thunder or lightning is, or what causes the intense sound directly after lightning strikes. We’re here to set the facts straight on this intense weather happening.
Lightning and thunder are… kind of the same thing, when you think about it. The difference between lightning and thunder isn’t really a ‘difference’ at all, but more of a, ‘one of these things leads to another’ type of situation.
Lightning is essentially just a spark of electricity that is between two clouds, or a cloud and the ground. The air basically insulates the positive and negative charges, but when enough of one charge builds up the air can no longer provide enough insulation. And boom, we have lightning, either from one cloud to another or from the cloud to the ground. Lightning isn’t justseen in thunderstorms, but anywhere that intense electrical charges are happening – this can be in a hurricane, a heavy snowstorm, or even a volcanic eruption.
So what causes thunder, then? Well, lightning does, actually!
When lightning strikes the ground, the air around the bolt is heated to upwards of 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 5 times the temperature of the sun. The air surrounding the electric bolt expands rapidly as it heats. As soon as the electricity is discharged, however, that air rapidly cools, resulting in the sound wave that we call thunder.
You may have heard this before, but it is true; you can tell by counting just how far away the lightning is from you!
When you observe lightning (From a safe place, and at a safe distance!), start counting seconds. If you get to 5 seconds before you hear the thunder to follow, that means the storm is about a mile away from you. 10 seconds mean 2 miles, with 15 meaning 3. If there is no break between the lightning and thunder, there is a good chance the storm is on top of you. Thunder can travel up to 10 miles in perfect conditions.
We can judge this distance because we know the speed of sound is slowerthan the speed of light. If sound traveled as fast as light does, there would never be a delay between the thunder and lightning at all!
