Community Corner
Lessons About Lightning
Phillyweather.net's Tom Thunstrom enlightens us about lightning.
Friday’s thunderstorms around the region brought some badly needed rain, but also brought a pretty impressive light show, including one lightning strike that blew apart a tree in Phoenixville.
Lightning is a discharge of electricity caused most commonly by a reaction between electrons and positively charged ions. The interaction of the two charges intense heat and electricity, with temperatures that can reach tens of thousands of degrees while producing substantial electrical output.
Lightning can take many different forms—the most common we are accustomed to seeing is cloud-to-ground lightning, which is when lightning strikes a spot where those positively charged ions have “stood” out the most and reach a point of interaction with atmospheric electrons.
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Other types include cloud-to-cloud lightning (that’s when the sky lights up in thunderstorms) or even ground-to-cloud. The latter of these is rare but typically a bit more “electrifying” in that it can carry out the most intense electrical discharge in a lightning strike.
The fast movement of the lightning strike (the speed of light being much faster than the speed of sound) typically results in a boom of thunder accompanying the strike. The speed of sound is 1,127-feet-per-second, compared to over 168,000-miles-per-second that light travels. Consequently, thunder rolls more slowly!
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The common “rule of thumb” for calculating distance between lightning strike and thunder boom is the “five-second rule.” If a lightning strike is a mile away from you, you should hear thunder in five seconds. The closer the separation between thunder and lightning, the closer you were to the lightning strike.
An average of 62 people die annually due to lightning strikes in the United States and on average, one or two people in Pennsylvania are killed by lightning strikes in the course of a year. Hundreds more nationally are injured annually.
If you can hear thunder, chances are you are close enough to be struck by lightning from a storm and it makes sense to seek shelter. If you’re outdoors and can’t find a building to hang out in during the storm, get to your car and stay inside with your windows rolled up. The metal in the car will conduct the electrical discharge and carry it to the ground without taking you out in the process.
