Lightning is an important part of weather forecasting. Lightning observed by the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) illuminates the storms developing over southeast Texas on the morning of February 14, 2017. If the thunder follows the lightning almost instantly, you know the lightning is too close for comfort! What does lightning look like from space? It takes approximately 5 seconds for the sound to travel 1 mile. We can estimate the distance of the lightning by counting how many seconds it takes until we hear the thunder. That is because light travels much faster than sound waves. If we are watching the sky, we see the lightning before we hear the thunder.
Rainstorm sounds flashing crack#
This creates an initial CRACK sound, followed by rumbles as the column of air continues to vibrate. The air then contracts rapidly as it cools. The heated air expands explosively, creating a shockwave as the surrounding air is rapidly compressed. That's five times hotter than the surface of the Sun! In a fraction of a second, lightning heats the air around it to incredible temperatures-as hot as 54,000 ☏ (30,000 ☌). We may see several strokes using the same path, giving the lightning bolt a flickering appearance, before the electrical discharge is complete.Ĭlick for larger animated image! What causes thunder? The channels connect and we see the lightning stroke. Although this phase of a lightning strike is too rapid for human eyes, this slow-motion video shows it happening.Īs the negative charge gets close to the ground, a positive charge, called a streamer, reaches up to meet the negative charge. A "stepped leader" of negative charge descends from the cloud seeking out a path toward the ground. These positive charges move up into the tallest objects like trees, telephone poles, and houses. Often lightning occurs between clouds or inside a cloud.īut the lightning we usually care about most is the lightning that goes from clouds to ground-because that's us!Īs the storm moves over the ground, the strong negative charge in the cloud attracts positive charges in the ground. It looks for the closest and easiest path to release its charge. The electric field "looks" for a doorknob. How does the lightning "know" where to discharge-or strike? When the strength of the charge overpowers the insulating properties of the atmosphere, Z-Z-Z-ZAP! Lightning happens. These electrical fields become incredibly strong, with the atmosphere acting as an insulator between them in the cloud. It's a little more complicated than that, but what results is a cloud with a negatively charged bottom and a positively charged top. Where the ice going down meets the water coming up, electrons are stripped off. Meanwhile, downdrafts in the cloud push ice and hail down from the top of the cloud. Water droplets in the bottom part of the cloud are caught in the updrafts and lifted to great heights where the much colder atmosphere freezes them. Winds inside the cloud are very turbulent. Lightning begins as static charges in a rain cloud.
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