Thunderstorm distances??

Question

ok this is like a totally random question but you know how you can tell how many miles away a storm is? is it how many seconds the thunder is after the lighting= # of miles. OR how many seconds the lighting is after the thunder= # of miles???

Answer 1

Sound travels about a mile in 5 seconds, so divide the time from lightning to thunder by 5 and you have the approximate distance in miles.

Answer 2

just watch the weather forecast or go to:

the weather channel

weather underground

met office

bbc weather

weatheronline

on google.

they will tell you all you want to know

Answer 3

After you see it lightning, you count the seconds till you hear it thunder, then you divide by 5.  If there are ten seconds in between, then the lightning struck 2 miles from you.

Answer 4

Well you should know offhand that the speed of light is many million times faster than the speed of sound, so there's no way the sound will reach you before the light

The speed of light 300,000,000 meters per second, so for any place within sight it reaches you practically instantly.  Sound through air is about 340 m/s (so actually light is just about a million times faster exactly)

There are about 1600 meters in a mile, so it takes sound about 5 seconds to travel a mile(4.7 actually)so when you see the flash of lightning, you can basically assume the lightning occured at that instant(since light is so fast)and now the sound of the thunder is heading towards you.  Every 5 seconds is a mile, so every second is a 5th of a mile