Why do we see lightning before thunder ?

A rainy sky, darker clouds bringing a gushing downpour and suddenly our eyes get startled by seeing a lightning tearing apart the clouds. And it brings a loud sound after it. Yes the thunder. 

But ever wondered why does thunder come after the lightning. Well yes there is some reason to the same. Let's find out why does this happen!

Before we go into the exact reason let's also understand why do lightning and thunder happen. Believe, it will get more interesting as we move forward. Thunder and lightning both happen as part of action and response to action. So we know about why do we have rains right? 

Warm weather heats the air which moves upwards as a result.As the air moves upwards where the temperature keeps on decreasing as the altitude increases.  As a result condensation or cooling down of the air happens. The water droplets held together takes form of clouds and when the amount of water to be held becomes too much for the air around to be held, down comes the rain. Just for information, there are other reasons as well why clouds form such as when stream of air is forced to move upwards because of barriers like mountains, multiple stream of air coming together and so on.

Now, lightning happens because of electric charges generated between the air and the water droplets moving in the opposite direction within the cloud. This movement causes rapid expansion of clouds and the heat brings out a thunder.

Coming back to the topic, as mentioned above thunder and lightning are both energies which are released. Thunder is more like a sound wave travelling while lightning as the word say is more light energy. The basic properties of both the form of energies are different. The speed at which these energies travel through certain medium are different say light travels slower in gas, little faster in liquids and much faster in solids. The speed of sound is said to be measured at around ~330 meters per second, on the other hand that of light is around ~300000000 meters per second. This is a huge difference and basically the reason why we hear lightning before thunder.

It's just a speed which matters here which is why we can hear thunder some time after lightning. Do you know there is a way where we can check where the storm is by calculating the time difference between lightning and thunder.

And on contrary to popular myth, lightning can strike the same area multiple times especially if it is an tall in stature. A popular example being the Empire State building in New York, USA where it said that lightning strikes the top almost more than 20 times a year.

Also, do you know one thing about clouds that they can form not just on sky but also on ground level when certain conditions are right, we call this as fog. If you think about it now, and what causes the cloud formation, its the same thing..

That's about the lightning strike for the curious mind for now, the thunder is right behind bringing more curious talks to explore.

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