What comes first in a thunderstorm?

Question

What comes first in a thunderstorm....thunder or lightning and what is the time between the two events?

Answer 1

I was a weather observer instructor many years ago.  At that time a thunderstorm was defined to exist when you heard thunder.  According to this definition thunder would have to come first.

Notice how silly some things can be.  If a thunderstorm means hearing thunder, a deaf person could never be in a thunderstorm.  Notice also how a person in a very loud place could get struck in the butt with lightning but could not have said the lightning came from a thunderstorm.

Answer 2

What's a thunderstorm?

Answer 3

Lightning, then thuder, because light travels faster than sound. They actually occur simultaneously, but the waves don't reach our ears at the same time because they are so far away.

If you count the seconds in between the lightning strike and the thunder clap, it tells you in miles how far away the center of the storm is, approximately.  1 one thousand, 2 one thousand 3 one thousand= 3 seconds= about 3 miles away.

Answer 4

The lightning heats the air till it appears to explode . The heat in a lightning strike is near the temp. of the sun.

Answer 5

lightning then thunder. thunder is sound which is significantly slower than light. something that you may not be aware of, is that lightning 9/10 times comes up from the ground because it is when negative ions (on the floor) attract positive ions (in the sky). Positive lighting however is different. It has positive ions on the floor and negative in the sky - causing positive lightning - 10 times more dangerous than negative lightning.

The speed of sound is  340.29 meters per second.

The speed of light is 299 792 458 meters per second.

you tell me which is faster

THATS WHERE A2 LEVEL PHYSICS GETS YOU

Answer 6

Lightning, definitely! The speed of light is approx. 300,000 km/s.

Answer 7

Thunder comes first...then the lightning.  The time between the two events is the distance of how far away the storm is from you.

Answer 8

Lightning comes first, then the thunder..and it depends on how far away the lightning hits before you hear the thunder...the sooner you hear it and the louder it is, the closer it is.