General information about lightning
| The lightning you see is the air heating up as the electricity passes through it. The air heats to 20,000 degrees Celsius, or three times as hot as the surface of the Sun! This sudden heating of the air also produces a shock wave, which you hear as thunder. Because thunder travels at the speed of sound, it usually takes some time to reach you after the lightning has occurred. If you count the number of seconds between the lighting and the thunder and divide by five, that's how many miles away from you the lightning was. |
Credit: NOAA Photo Library
For more info: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/researchitems/lightning.shtml