The air around the lightning bolt expands faster than the speed of sound, which creates a shock wave of thunder. When you’re this close to the bolt, though, it sounds more like a bullet from a gun. Alderete’s video shakes during the strike, but you can still see beads of plasma along the channel as the light fades.

With nearby lightning strikes the thunder will sound like a loud bang, crack or snap and its duration will be very short. As the shock wave propagates away from the strike center, it stretches, diminishes, and becomes elongated. Then other shock waves from more distance locations arrive at the listener.

Thunder is produced by lightning. A lightning bolt heats the air through which it travels to about 50,000 degrees. This rapid heating, followed by rapid cooling, creates sound waves which, when they reach our ears, we hear as thunder.

Myth: If caught outside during a thunderstorm, you should lie flat on the ground. 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.

It kills more people than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods. Lightning kills approximately 24 000 people around the world every year. And approximately 240 000 people will be struck or injured but survive a lightning strike, often with severe disabilities. Lightning is a completely random and anonymous killer.

Superbolts, the strongest lightning bolts, occur at surprising times and in surprising places, a new study has found. Scientists define superbolts as lightning bolts a thousand times stronger than average.

The Luxembourg disaster may have been the most deadly lightning strike in history. The earth experiences 8 to 9 million lightning strikes every single day. In a typical year, the United States will see about 70,000 thunderstorms somewhere in its territory.

Negative lightning accounts for the majority of strikes in a storm and are dangerous. Positive lightning strikes account for less than 5% of lightning strikes, but they are the deadliest. They originate in the top of the cloud where there are positive charges.

New Word Suggestion. One of the most dangerous type of cloud-to-ground lightning bolts that comes out of the back side of the thunderstorm cloud that travels a relatively large distance in the clear away from the storm cloud then angles down and strikes the ground.

[storm] Pink lightning, (also purple lightning) is a type of lightning that is louder, and has a purple-pink color effect. Pink lightning occurs when a storm is producing precipitation. Pink lightning is also more common, because it has positive charges.

The temperature of it also affects what color we see. The hotter it is, the closer to the end of the spectrum the color is. Its temperature can get as high as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit which is hotter than the heat on the sun’s surface. Also, the distance between the bolt and the observer can impact what they see.

The majority of lighting occurs within a cloud, or from cloud to cloud — when opposite charges find each other. Rainbow. Raindrops may shuttle electrical charges to form lightning, but to form a rainbow, raindrops must scatter sunlight, separating the light into the colors that make up a rainbow.

Rainbow lightning is a rare as the chances of lightning striking near a rainbow are slim, explained Randall Cerveny, a professor of meteorology at Arizona State University in Tempe. Lightning, on the other hand, can be created when raindrops shuttle electrical charges.

Lightning comes in every color of the rainbow (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Violet, to name a few). It’s almost always white, but often it’s tinged with another color around the edges.

When a negative charge is transferred from a cloud to the ground, it’s known as negative lightning, and it makes up about 90 to 95 percent of all the lightning you ever see. By contrast, positive lightning happens because of that positive charge that builds up at the top of the cloud.

There are three common types of lightning: cloud to ground, cloud to cloud and cloud to air. Cloud to ground lightning is the most dangerous. The ground is mainly consisted of positively charged particles while the bottom of violent storm clouds have negative charged particles.

Volcanic lightning is a spectacular but rare phenomenon which comes after a volcano erupts. The process has been documented for thousands of years, most notably when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79.