Why You Should Count Between Thunder and Lightning - FLAME Furnace (2024)

FAQs

Why You Should Count Between Thunder and Lightning - FLAME Furnace? ›

It takes approximately 5 seconds for the sound of thunder to travel a mile. So, when you count the number of seconds between seeing a crack of lightning and hearing the thunder, divide that number by 5 and that is how many miles away the lightning was when it struck.

The loud boom that you sometimes hear is created by the main lightning channel as it reaches the ground. Since you see lightning immediately and it takes the sound of thunder about 5 seconds to travel a mile, you can calculate the distance between you and the lightning.

When You See Lightning, Count The Time Until You Hear Thunder. If That Is 30 Seconds Or Less, The Thunderstorm Is Close Enough To Be Dangerous – Seek Shelter (if you can't see the lightning, just hearing the thunder is a good back-up rule). Wait 30 Minutes Or More After The Lightning Flash Before Leaving Shelter.

Stay away from all metal objects, equipment, and surfaces that can conduct electricity. Do not shelter in sheds, pavilions, tents, or covered porches as they do not provide adequate protection from lightning. Seek fully-enclosed, substantial buildings with wiring and plumbing.

Remember the 30/30 lightning safety rule: Go indoors if, after seeing lightning, you cannot count to 30 before hearing thunder. Stay indoors 30 minutes after hearing the last clap of thunder.

A general rule of thumb to know how far off a bolt of lightning is when you hear thunder, if you count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder, and then divide by 5, you'll get the distance in miles to the lightning: 5 seconds = 1 mile, 15 seconds = 3 miles, 0 seconds = very close.

Jackson Browne from the Bureau of Meteorology said counting the seconds between when you see a strike of lightning and hear the accompanying thunder could help you figure out how far away the lightning is.

The thirty-minute wait is not based on local data measurements of any kind, but rather a “feel good” wait period that some guess is a safe period of time to assume there is no energy left behind in the area which could attract a strike back from the storm that has passed.

Because electrical charges can linger in clouds after a thunderstorm has seemingly passed, experts agree that people should wait at least 30 minutes after the last thunder before resuming outdoor activities.

Storm Distance Safety Tips

The CDC tells us, “when thunder roars, go indoors.” They also advise following the 30-30 rule, which means if less than 30 seconds passes after lightning strikes before hearing thunder, you should take shelter.

What should you not do during lightning? ›

Stay off corded phones, computers and other electrical equipment that put you in direct contact with electricity. Avoid plumbing, including sinks, baths and faucets. Stay away from windows and doors, and stay off porches. Do not lie on concrete floors, and do not lean against concrete walls.

Minimizing the Risk

If the sky looks threatening or if you hear thunder, get inside a safe place immediately. Once inside, avoid contact with corded phones, electrical equipment, plumbing, and windows and doors. Finally, wait 30 minutes after the last lightning or thunder before going back outside.

The 30-30 rule for thunderstorm safety is simple: when you hear thunder within 30 seconds of a lightning flash, seek shelter and stay there at least 30 minutes after the last lightning flash.

Stay away from windows and doors, and stay off porches. Do NOT lie on concrete floors or lean on concrete walls during a thunderstorm. Lightning can travel through any metal wires or bars in concrete walls or flooring. Don't use corded phones.

Each five seconds is about one mile of distance. You may have heard that you can count the number of seconds between seeing lightning and hearing thunder to estimate the distance you are from the lightning strike. This is the “flash-to-bang” method of calculating distance and it works.

If we are watching the sky, we see the lightning before we hear the thunder. That is because light travels much faster than sound waves. We can estimate the distance of the lightning by counting how many seconds it takes until we hear the thunder.

Thunderstorms have three stages in their life cycle: The developing stage, the mature stage, and the dissipating stage.

Lightning and subvisible discharges produce molecules that clean the atmosphere. Lightning bolts break apart nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and create reactive chemicals that affect greenhouse gases.

Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela is the place on Earth that receives the most lightning strikes. Massive thunderstorms occur on 140-160 nights per year with an average of 28 lightning strikes per minute lasting up to 10 hours at a time. That's as many as 40,000 lightning strikes in one night!

Lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere between clouds, the air, or the ground.

When a man seeing a lightning starts counting? ›

A man seeing a lightning starts counting seconds until he hears thunder. He then claims to have found an approximate but simple rule that if the count of second is divided by an integer, the result directly gives, in km, the distance of the lightning source.

Follow these safety rules: Immediately move to safe shelter: a substantial building with electricity or plumbing or an enclosed, metal-topped vehicle with windows up. Stay in safe shelter at least 30 minutes after the last sound of thunder. Stay off corded phones, computers and other electrical equipment.

Lightning can travel 10 to 12 miles from a thunderstorm. This is often farther than the sound of thunder travels. That means that if you can hear thunder you are close enough to a storm to be in danger of being struck by lightning.

Myth: If you are in a house, you are 100% safe from lightning. Fact: A house is a safe place to be during a thunderstorm as long as you avoid anything that conducts electricity. This means staying off corded phones, electrical appliances, wires, TV cables, computers, plumbing, metal doors and windows.

The short answer is, no. Swimming in a thunderstorm with lightning present is not safe, whether you're in the ocean or a pool. A body of water is the equivalent of putting a hairdryer in a bath, and because water conducts electricity, lightning is more likely to strike water than land.

Lightning often strikes water, and water conducts electricity. That means that the currents from a lightning strike can seriously injure you. In fact, it can even kill you. This is why, when you hear thunder or see lightning, it's a good idea to avoid the pool, beach and any other large body of water.

Safe shelters are buildings with electricity and plumbing or metal-topped vehicles with the windows closed. Picnic shelters, dugouts and small buildings without plumbing or electricity are not safe. Below are some key safety tips for you, your pets and your home.

Simply count the number of seconds between the flash and the sound of thunder and divide by 5 to get the distance in miles. So, 1 second = less than a mile (a fifth of a mile), 5 seconds = 1 mile, 20 seconds = 4 miles, etc. This technique is known as the “flash-to-bang” method.

Average number of lightning strikes worldwide every second - 100. Average number of lightning strikes worldwide per day - 8.6 Million.

Stay off and out of the water, and in a safe location for 30 minutes after the last rumble of thunder. About one third of lightning-related casualties occur after the storm because people return to outdoor activities too soon.

What attracts lightning to a house? ›

Metal pipes and wires can allow lightning to travel into a house with often damaging and dangerous results.

While lightning we should stay in a closed place preferably in a closed room or car. We should avoid taking shelter under trees or standing in an open field while lightning. Electric wire, telephone lines, and metal surfaces should never be touched while lightning.

Stay away from anything that could conduct electricity such as radios, toasters, hairdryers and Unplug any electronic equipments before the thunderstorm arrives. This may also include fireplaces, radiators, stoves metal pipes, sinks, and phones. Stay away from window and doors and stay off verandas.

The risk of lightning travelling through plumbing might be less with plastic pipes than with metal pipes. However, it is best to avoid any contact with plumbing and running water during a lightning storm to reduce your risk of being struck.

Males are four times more likely than females to be struck by lightning. The average age of a person struck by lightning is 37 years. About one-third of lightning injuries occur indoors.

Lightning can jump through windows, so keep your distance from them during storms! The second way lightning can enter a building is through pipes or wires. If the lightning strikes utility infrastructure, it can travel through those pipes or wires and enter your home that way.

The safest location during a thunderstorm is inside a large enclosed structure with plumbing and electrical wiring. These include shopping centers, schools, office buildings, and private residences.

Stay inside until the storms have moved away AND thunder is no longer audible. This is very important, since lightning can and occasionally does strike well away from the thunderstorm itself.

But not every tale of lightning is false, and you should be happy to hear that if you haven't seen any lightning or heard any thunder for 30 minutes, you're generally safe to crawl out of your Faraday cage.

The estimated diameter of a lightning channel is about 1 inch. The length of an average cloud-to-ground channel can range from 2 to 10 miles. You can tell how far away a lightning stroke is by counting the seconds between seeing the lightning flash and hearing the thunder.

How far away does lightning have to be to shower? ›

In fact, it's likely within 10 miles of you, according to the National Weather Service. Lightning can travel through plumbing so don't shower or wash hands or dishes during a thunderstorm.

Whether you're crafting an eBook, a whitepaper, a guide, a blog, or other written collateral, the “3-30-3” rule specifies you have just 3 seconds to grab a reader's attention, 30 seconds to engage them, and roughly 3 minutes for them to spend reading the content.

Fact: NO PLACE outside is safe when thunderstorms are in the area. If you are caught outside in a thunderstorm, keep moving toward a safe shelter.

Cars are safe from lightning because of the metal cage surrounding the people inside the vehicle. This may sound counter-intuitive because metal is a good conductor of electricity, but the metal cage of a car directs the lightning charge around the vehicle occupants and safely into the ground.

To get to sleep you will need to drown out the crashing thunder. One method is to use earplugs. You can buy these at any pharmacy in a variety of kinds, including foam, cotton, or wax. If you don't find ear plugs comfortable enough to fall asleep, try listening to soothing music or even a white noise machine.

Thunderstorms can be considered dry if they don't produce any rain at the surface. However, for the fire weather community, a "dry thunderstorm" may be used to describe a storm producing very little rainfall, such that is not effective in checking fire spread after lightning ignition.

More often than not, thunderstorms strike late in the evening, at night or during the early hours of the morning. It is during the evening when the earth's surface is at its hottest after hours of direct exposure to the sun's rays.

Because of the heat they generate, flashes with continuing current are sometimes referred to as hot lightning while flashes containing only return strokes are referred to as "cold lightning."

If you can't hear thunder, that usually means you're more than 6 to 10 miles from a thunderstorm; and that's the typical maximum distance lightning can strike to the side.

A longer rumble of thunder occurs when the strike is farther away. The shape of the lightning matters too. Shock waves can bounce off each other and create those long, rumbles of thunder. Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc.

How many seconds does it take for lightning to strike 7250 times? ›

In 1000 seconds, lightning strikes Earth 7250 times.

That is because light travels much faster than sound waves. We can estimate the distance of the lightning by counting how many seconds it takes until we hear the thunder. It takes approximately 5 seconds for the sound to travel 1 mile.

Lightning reaches the observer with a very large speed, i.e., with the speed of light (3×108m/s). Thus the entire time of 10s between the seeing of lightning and hearing of thunderstorm is taken by the sound to travel to the observer. Hence, distance of the thunder cloud i.e., s=vt=(340m/s)(10s)=3400m=3.4m.

The thunder you hear is the rapid expansion of the air in response to the lightning's intense heat. If you're really close to the lightning, you will see it and hear the thunder simultaneously. But when it's far away, you see and hear the event at different times. That's because light travels much faster than sound.

The term heat lightning is commonly used to describe lightning from a distant thunderstorm just too far away to see the actual cloud-to-ground flash or to hear the accompanying thunder.

An observer may see nearby lightning, but the sound from the discharge is refracted over their head by a change in the temperature, and therefore the density, of the air around him. As a result, the lightning discharge seems to be silent.

Why does the house shake when there is a thunder storm? Your house will shake depending the closeness of the lightning. Thunder is a sonic boom that comes from the rapid heating of the air around a lightning strike.

At night, the atmosphere always cools from the ground up. This leaves a warmer layer in the upper atmosphere until the next day's sun heats the ground and then we warm from the ground up. When we have a thunderstorm at night, sound bounces off of that warm layer and has nowhere else to go but down and to our ears.

It is during the evening when the earth's surface is at its hottest after hours of direct exposure to the sun's rays. By the early evening, the warm ground begins radiating energy, producing hot air which expands and rises upwards into the atmosphere.

At the time, it was recognised as the longest lightning flash ever recorded. Since then, advancements in technology have allowed researchers to measure much larger flashes, and more of them. In 2007, researchers identified a bolt over Oklahoma that measured 200 miles (322 km) long.

What is the longest continuous lightning strike? ›

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced its confirmation of the longest ever lightning strike, a gargantuan mega-bolt that stretched for more than 750km across three American states.

Cloud-to-ground lightning bolts are a common phenomenon—about 100 strike Earth's surface every single second—yet their power is extraordinary. Each bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity.