Without the aid of anyone or anything, how is it possible to tell how far away a thunderstorm is, from where y

Question

Without the aid of anyone or anything, how is it possible to tell how far away a thunderstorm is, from where you stand?

Answer 1

You generally won't hear thunder if you are more than 3 miles away from it. The sound travels roughly about 1 mile in 5 seconds. Light travels faster than sound, so you will see lightning before you would hear the thunder. Take the seconds between the flash of lightning and the clap of thunder, and divide that number by 5 seconds. This will give you an estimate as to how far away the storm/lightning is.
So if you see a flash of lightning, and the thunder comes at about 15 seconds afterward, that would mean the storm, or more particularly, that bolt of lighting was about 3 miles away.

Answer 2

You count in seconds from the time you see the lightning to the time you hear the thunder. Since light travels so fast, you see it almost instantaneously. Although sound will travel at different speeds according to atmospheric conditions, for the purposes of your question, let's just say it travels at 750 mph, or approx. 1200 feet per second. Take the number of seconds between the lightning and the thunder and multiply by 1200, then divide by 5200. This will give you a rough approximation of the distance in miles.. If you are using meters, the formula would be (seconds x 350) / 1000 = km. I should also say that this will only tell you how far away a particular lightning strike in the thunderstorm is. The strike may have occured on the side of the storm furthest away from you, so the storm may, in reality, be much closer. Of course, if you happen to have a doppler radar handy, just use it. It will give you a much more precise reading.

Answer 3

The sound of thunder travels 1 mile in about 5 seconds. So, when you see a flash of lightning start counting the seconds until you hear the thunder. Just divide that number by 5 and that's the approximate distance the thunderstorm is from you.

Answer 4

A lightning bolt and a thunderclap should be instantaneous. They aren't, because the light from the lightning and the sound from the thunder leave the same vicinity, but travel at different speeds to reach you. The speed of light is so great that for our purposes it can be considered instantaneous. The speed of sound in air is about 340 m / s.
You see the lightning bolt the instant it appears. It will then take the sound of the thunder 1 second to reach you, for every 340 metres it has to travel. It works out as being about 1 mile for every 5 seconds between the lightning bolt and the thunderclap.

Answer 5

I am not a meteorologist but I think you can tell if you can see lightening and time the time between it and the sound of thunder. Based on that there is a formula to calculate distance.

Answer 6

If I remember correctly, you count the seconds between the lighning & thunder and that gives you how many miles away it is? I don't know if I'm right or not... :-/