does lightening come before thunder?

Answer 1

The flash of a lightning strike and resulting thunder occur at roughly the same time. But light travels at 186,000 miles in a second, almost a million times the speed of sound. Sound travels at the slower speed of one-fifth of a mile in the same time. So the flash of lightning is seen before thunder is heard. By counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder and dividing by 5, you can estimate your distance from the strike (in miles). But why does lightning cause thunder at the same time it strikes?

Lightning causes thunder because a strike of lightning is incredibly hot. A typical bolt of lightning can immediately heat the air to between 15,000 to 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hotter than the surface of the sun!
A lightning strike can heat the air in a fraction of a second. When air is heated that quickly, it expands violently and then contracts, like an explosion that happens in the blink of an eye. It's that explosion of air that creates sound waves, which we hear and call thunder.

When lightning strikes very close by, we hear the thunder as a loud and short bang. We hear thunder from far away as a long, low rumble.

Lightning always produces thunder. When you see lightning but don't hear any thunder, the lightning is too far away from you for the sound waves to reach you.

Light and sound will always move at different speeds. And lightning will always produce thunder because of a strike's high temperature. So no matter what, you will always see a flash of lightning before you hear thunder.

Answer 2

We normally see lightening before we hear thunder. This is because the light from lightening travels at about 186,000 m/p/second, while sound from lightening travels at about 760 m/p/hour(in the atomosphere at 59 degree F at sea level).
Of course, if the lightening occurs right above you, you may not notice any difference between seeing and hearing.

Answer 3

Lightning is the electrical charge from a positive charge in the clouds to a negative point on the ground, the thunder is the sound of the air compressing quickly together after the lighting bold has occupied the space in the atmosphere. So truely the lightning is first, but it happens so fast is seems to happen at the same time.

Car Craze Gal has the best answer :)

Answer 4

Thunder and lightning happen simultaneously. Thunder is the sound that lightning makes.

You see lightning first because the speed of light (186,000/miles per second) is faster than the speed of sound. 343 miles per second or 750 mph)

The faster which a sound wave travels, the more distance it will cover in the same period of time. (which is why the approximation of the distance of the lightning strike (storm) is fairly accurate when counting seconds between strike and thunder.

Hope this answers your question in full.

Answer 5

Lightening produces the thunder and mild travels a lot swifter than sound so that you spot the mild in the previous you listen the thunder except it strikes very on the point of you in which case. they extremely a lot arrive at the same time.

Answer 6

Yes. Thunder is the sound made by lightening

Answer 7

Actually they come together.. But from afar, we hear the thunder later than seeing the lightening. Light travels faster than sound!

Answer 8

Actually they happen at the same time. But we see things before we hear them. So we see the lightning before the thunder.

Answer 9

Its the other way around, thunder results from the rapid heating, and therefore expansion of the air due to the high current of the lightning strike passing through it. Or, thunder results from hot air that is heated rapidly by the lightning resulting in an acoustic wave that one hears as thunder.

Answer 10

Thunder is the result of lightning super heating the air around it.