How To Tell How Far Away Lightning Is

If you want to know approximately how far away is lightning in miles divide the number of seconds by 5 for kilometers divide the seconds by 3. Use the stop watch or count one mississippi two. Divide the number of seconds you count by 5 to get the number of miles.
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Thunder can be heard up to 25 miles away and lightning strikes have been documented to occur as far as 25 miles from thunderstorms known as a bolt from the.

How to tell how far away lightning is. When you see the flash of a lightning bolt you can start counting seconds and then divide to see how far away the lightning struck. The national weather service recommends taking cover if the time between the lightning flash and the rumble of thunder is 30 seconds or less which indicates the lightning is about 6 miles away or. Or simply use our lightning distance calculator which can calculate it more accurately at a speed of light. It will give us 3 miles or 5 kilometers.

Hanna pamua phd candidate. If you wish to. For every 5 seconds the storm is one mile away. Take your response and divide it by 5 to determine the distance of the lightning strike in miles.

This notion is actually called flash to bang method because of the time between seeing and hearing lightning. For example if you counted to 15 seconds before you heard thunder divide 15 by 5 to get 3 miles. It takes five seconds for that sound to travel one mile to your ear. When you see that.

To calculate the distance from lightning watch the sky for lightning and then count the number of seconds after a lightning strike until you hear thunder. After you see a flash of lightning count the number of seconds until you hear the thunder. Thats actually a trick question. That flash of light from lightning travels to your eye almost instantly but that sound of thunder takes time.

Many of us have heard that if you determine the lightning distance from you to a strike by counting the number of seconds between hearing thunder and seeing a lightning strike that is how far away in miles the lightning is not true. For example a five second gap indicates the lightning struck one mile away. If it takes 10 seconds for the thunder to roll in the lightning struck about 2 miles or 3 kilometers away. The resulting number will tell you how many miles you are away from where the lighting has just struck.

For more information on lightning and related topics check out the links on the next page. Advertisement autoplay when autoplay is enabled a suggested video will automatically play next. Can you tell how far away lightning is by counting.