how does thunder happen, and what is the practice used for seconds used from flash til thunder to get distance

Question

The way to tell the distance of a thunderstorm. Using lightning, sound, and the time it takes between both.

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)
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

When you see a lightning bolt, count the seconds until you hear the sound of thunder. The less seconds between the two, the closer it is to you. Divide the number of seconds by 5. So if it's 15 seconds that seperates the lightning bolt from the thunder, then it's 3 miles away.

Answer 3

The bolt of lightning is so hot that it causes instantaneous expansion of the gas (air) along its entire path. The rapid expansion initiates a shock wave that you hear as a clap of thunder. people used to think that the sound was produced by a vacuum after the bolt passes but that is far weaker than the rapid expansion. There are 5,280 feet in a mile and sound travels in air at a speed of 1,100 feet per second (or about a mile in five seconds). When you see the flash, count (flash/one potato ... two potato ... three, etc.) until you hear the thunder. If your count is seven (potatoes?), five goes into that with two left over and the lightning is about one and two fifths of a mile away. If you continued to count until the rumble stopped, perhaps eleven potatoes, the farthest part of the same bolt would be about two and one fifth miles away. That wont give the length of the bolt because it is rarely on a straight line away from you.

Answer 4

The lightning bolt itself has a temperature of 30 million degrees. That heat causes air to expand rapidly; then it cools off and the vacuum draws air back in, creating a crash of thunder.

The flash from lightning travels at the speed of light, of course. The thunder travels at the speed of sound, which is about one mile every five seconds (or one kilometre every three seconds). So the time difference between the flash and the bang are proportional to the distance from the lightning to the observer.

When you see a lightning flash, start counting "one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand..." until you hear the thunder. The number of seconds counted divided by five is the range in miles; the number divided by three is in kilometres.

Answer 5

When a warm air mass confronts a cold air mass it will clash and cause the thunder you hear. For an approaching storm, when you see the lightning flash, you count a second at a time, which then indicates that many miles away the storm is from the first clash of thunder.