Fun Lightning Facts

I took this image in 2002 with my first digital camera. I stood outside, under a tiny overhang in the backdoor and clicked until I got not only this but one other image of lightning. Pretty neat!

I love this stuff:

For those of you who think reading in the bathroom is weird, just remember, these are all books with facts. The Uncle John Bathroom Reader Institute books are fun, loaded with interesting information and have different size bits to fit your time needs. And the tidbits are not always what you'd think. I read about how basketball came about. They clearly wrote if for the non-sports enthusiast, like me.

So here is this one-pager:

"HOW EN-LIGHTNING
Zap! BRI member Kurt Stark requested these facts about lightning.

Every second, there are 100 to 125 flashes of lightning somewhere on Earth.

A lightning bolt can be anywhere between 200 feet and 20 miles long, but the average length, cloud-to-ground, is two to ten miles.

Lightning speeds toward the Earth at an average of 200,000 miles per hour.

The average flash of lightning contains 125 million volts of electricity--enough to light a 100-watt bulb for more than three months.

The chances of being hit by lightning in your lifetime are about 1 in 600,000. Still, anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people are struck by lightning every year in the U.S.

The temperature of the lightning stroke can reach up to 50,000 F--hotter than the Sun's surface.

Lightning bolts actually flicker-- a flash is a series of strokes. that follow the exact same path as the first one. The record number of strokes ever recorded in a single flash is 47.

When you see a lightning flash, count the seconds until you hear the bang of thunder. Divide by five--sounds travels about one mile every five seconds--and this will give you an approximation of the storm's distance from you.

About one-quarter of all lightning strikes occur in open fields; 30% happen in July, 22% in August.

You can get struck by lightning while you're on the phone. It happens to about 2.5% of all lightning-strike victims.

Trees are lightning bolts' favorite targets--lightning is the biggest cause of forest fires in the western U.S.

Estimated diameter of a lightning channel: 0.5 to 1 inch.

A charge of 100 million to 1 billion volts of electricity needs to be generated in a cloud to start a cloud-to-ground lightning strike.

For the last decade, an average of 20 million cloud-to-ground flashes have been counted over the continental U.S. each year."

Any outdoor business like sports has to have a lightning detection system set up. One sound to tell you to head for cover, one to tell you it is all clear. Every state has different rules, but in New Jersey (the only state I worry about) it is five miles. So, if a lightning strike occurs in a five mile radius, the big old air horn sound will go off. I would guess that in areas that are not flat as a pancake and you can see storms coming from miles off, the system might be set to a wider range. Not a bad idea. Outdoor baseball games, concerts, parks and recreational areas, water parks, etc - this is something that you want to have.

The second image of lightning I took, during the same storm. I'm not sure if the strike had not completed its journey or if this was a cloud-to-cloud stroke, but there it is, just kind of hanging there. I try to get shots of thunder every time I can, but it is not easy.

I don't know if it is mandated in New Jersey - since this is one of the more people-safety happy states, I would think that they would. Maybe the state would find acceptable a post of some kind saying, "We have no storm detection system so you should watch out for your own butt."

Look at the range a lightning strike has - up to 50 miles from its home cloud. That is 50,000 feet from where ever it is originating. Look at the distance for sound:

Sound

Because the electrostatic discharge of terrestrial lightning superheats the air to plasma temperatures along the length of the discharge channel in a short duration, kinetic theory dictates gaseous molecules undergo a rapid increase in pressure and thus expand outward from the lightning creating a shock wave audible as thunder. Since the sound waves propagate not from a single point source but along the length of the lightning's path, the sound origin's varying distances from the observer can generate a rolling or rumbling effect. Perception of the sonic characteristics are further complicated by factors such as the irregular and possibly branching geometry of the lightning channel, by acoustic echoing from terrain, and by the typically multiple-stroke characteristic of the lightning strike.

Since light travels at a significantly greater speed than sound through air, an observer can approximate the distance to the strike by timing the interval between the visible lightning and the audible thunder it generates. At standard atmospheric temperature and pressures near ground level, sound will travel at roughly 343 m/s (1125 ft/sec); a lightning flash preceding its thunder by five seconds would be about one mile distant. A flash preceding thunder by three seconds is about one kilometer distant. Consequently, a lightning strike observed at a very close distance (within 100 meters) will be accompanied by the sound of a loud snap, instant thunder, and the smell of Ozone (03).

How disappointing. All this time I've been calculating the distance of storms incorrectly. See, I learned something new. Anytime I learn something, I know it's been a good day.