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A return stroke, cloud-to-ground lightning strike during a thunderstorm. Cloud-to-ground lightning frequently occurs within the phenomena of thunderstorms and have numerous hazards towards landscapes and populations. One of the more significant hazards lightning can pose is the wildfires they are capable of igniting. [54]
Thunder is the sound caused by and after lightning. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Depending upon the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a long, low rumble to a sudden, loud crack. The sudden increase in temperature and hence pressure caused by the lightning produces rapid expansion of the air in the path of a lightning bolt . [ 4 ]
An observer can approximate the distance to the strike by timing the interval between the visible lightning and the audible thunder it generates. A lightning flash preceding its thunder by one second would be approximately 343 m (0.213 miles) away; thus a delay of three seconds would indicate a distance of about 1 km (0.62 miles); while a flash ...
Thunder and lightning are much more common in warm, summer months because of convection, the upward motion of air that helps produce thunderstorms. Because convection is rare in winter ...
Sympathetic lightning is the tendency of lightning to be loosely coordinated across long distances. Discharges can appear in clusters when viewed from space. [22] [23] [24] [clarification needed] Upward lightning or ground-to-cloud lightning is a lightning flash which originates from the top of a grounded object and propagates upward from this ...
The flash of a lightning strike and resulting thunder occur at roughly the same time. But light travels 300,000 km/sec, almost a million times the speed of sound. Sound travels at the slower speed of about 340 m/sec (depending on the temperature), so the flash of lightning is seen before thunder is heard. A method to determine the distance ...
Lightning; Mirages (including Fata Morgana) Monochrome Rainbow; Moon dog; Moonbow; Nacreous cloud/Polar stratospheric cloud; Rainbow; Sprite (lightning) Subsun; Sun dog; Tangent arc; Tyndall effect; Upper-atmospheric lightning, including red sprites, Blue jets, and ELVES; Water sky
The Earth is struck by lightning nearly 20 million times each year, and bolts of lightning can travel as much as 10 to 12 miles from a thunderstorm, instantly heating the air to 50,000 degrees ...