Notes from Papaw: Lightning & Thunder

This week I want to talk about lightning & thunder. Have you ever been in a storm where you heard thunder? It can be kind of scary! But the thunder cannot hurt you. It’s just noise. And it happens after the lightning has already happened. It’s still a good thing to go indoors when you hear it. You don’t want to get struck by lightning!

Lightning is a huge spark that can strike from a cloud to the ground, from the ground up to a cloud, or even from cloud to cloud. Lightning is very hot. It can be 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit! I can have the power of up to 80 million car batteries. Wow that’s powerful. They say that lightning strikes the earth somewhere 100 times every second. We do not have that much lightning in California, but there is a place in Venezuela called Lake Maracaibo that has the most lightning of any place in the world, It has thunderstorms about 150 days a year. That’s like having a lightning storm every 3 days! Benjamin Franklin (the guy on the $100 dollar bill) is said to be the inventor of the lightning rod. It was a piece of metal put on houses in the 1700’s to keep them from catching fire during lightning storms. Lightning rods saved a lot of buildings and they are still in use today in some places.

If you want to find out more about lightning, here are some fun sites.

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/lightning-

https://www.weatherwizkids.com/weather/lightning/

Here are some fun facts about lightning:

· Lightning is caused by imbalances in electric charges within or between clouds and the ground.
· The air around a lightning strike can be heated to an incredible 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (27,700 degrees Celsius), which is hotter than the surface of the sun.
· Thunder is the sound produced by the rapid expansion of air due to the intense heat of a lightning strike.
· You can estimate the distance of a thunderstorm by counting the seconds between seeing lightning and hearing thunder, with each 5 seconds representing 1 mile.
· The Earth experiences an average of 100 lightning strikes per second worldwide.
· Lightning can strike outside of thunderstorms, and it's important to take shelter indoors when thunder is heard, according to the National Weather Service (.gov).
· Lightning can strike the same place multiple times.
· Lightning can occur even without rain, sometimes called blue-sky lightning.
· Volcanic eruptions can also cause lightning as ash and other debris collide.
· A rare phenomenon where a glowing ball of lightning appears, sometimes lasting longer than a normal lightning strike.
· Lightning can strike beaches and melt sand, forming unique rock formations called fulgurites.