ESL Blogs

Thundering

Thunder is a stream of electrons flowing between or within clouds, or a cloud and the ground. The air around this electron stream is hot around 50,000 ⁰F, which is three times hotter to surface of the sun. When this hot air becoming cooler it produces a resonating tube of partial vacuum surrounding the lightning's path. The nearby air expands and contracts in short time. This makes a column to vibrate like a tubular drum head and produces a tremendous crack and the vibrations gradually die out with sound echoes and reverberates, making with rumbling thunder; can hear 10 miles or more distant.

You can see the lightning first because the speed of sound in air is slower. The shock waves follow the path of the electrons like a fist in a sock. The light from the flash comes you in a decimal of a second, but the sound comes slowly.