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Thunder is the shockwave radiating away from the strike path. When the air heats up, it expands rapidly, creating a compression wave that propagates through the surrounding air. This compression wave manifests itself in the form of a sound wave. That does not mean that thunder is harmless. On the contrary, if you are close enough, you can feel the shockwave as it shakes the surroundings. Keep in mind that when a nuclear explosion occurs, typically the most destruction is caused by the energy of the rapidly moving shockwave. In fact, the shockwave that produces the thunder from a lightning strike can most certainly damage structures and people. This danger is more prominent when you are close to the strike, because the shockwave is stronger there and will dampen (decrease) with distance. Physics teaches us that sound travels much slower than light, so we see the flash before we hear the thunder. In air, sound travels roughly 1 mile every 4.5 seconds. Light travels at a blazing 186,000 miles (299,000 kilometers) per second.
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ReneLight travels faster than sound. When lightning strikes, light reaches you almost instantaneously, while the sound of thunder, which is caused by the rapid expansion of air heated by the lightning, takes longer to reach you. This delay results in seeing the lightning before hearing the thunder.
Because the lightning is just to far away from us. When the sound waves first start to travel, they have lots of energy, so the peaks are tightly packed. As the sound waves travel farther, they start to lose energy. When the waves lose all of their energy, they are flat. The reason you cannot hear the thunder is because the sound waves did not have enough energy to reach your ears.
The speed of light is faster than the speed of sound. So when lightning occurs, you can see it sooner than you then hear it. The further away you are from the lightning, the longer it takes for you to hear it. If lightning occurs right near you, you see the flash and hear the thunder at the same time.
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Can you see thunder or lightning?
You see lighting and hear thunder.
If you see lightning and didn't here thunder what dose that mean?
If you see lightning but don't hear thunder, it means the lightning is far away. The speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound, so you usually see lightning before you hear the associated thunder.
Why are you hearing thundering after lightning?
A lightning flash travels at the speed of light. The sound of thunder travels much slower. Therefore, we see the flash before we hear the thunder.
What happens when there is lightning but no thunder?
Thunder is the sound caused by lightning, there is always thunder with lightning. If you cannot hear thunder maybe that is because you are too far away from the storm.
Why don't the thunder and lightning come together?
Thunder and lighting do occur together during a thunderstorm. Lightning is a sudden discharge of electricity in the atmosphere, which creates the bright light that we see, while thunder is the sound created by the rapid expansion of air around the lightning bolt. Light travels faster than sound, so we see the lightning before we hear the thunder.
