Even if you are standing out in front of your house with all kinds of trees and buildings blocking your view of distant clouds, you can often see the light skipping across the upper atmosphere even when you are looking straight up. As warm air rises, the cloud expands, getting bigger and bigger. When the ground is hot, it heats up the air directly above it. It starts when an electric current forms in a cloud. Dry lightning most often occurs in very dry conditions such as the western part of the. While scientists aren’t exactly sure why lightning happens, they do know how it happens. However, the light from distant lightning flashes can be seen for sometimes hundreds of miles under the right conditions. This is called dry lightning and is produced during a dry thunderstorm. You can hear thunder from a lightning strike farther away if you're out on open water with no trees or hills around to absorb the sound, and the thunder also propagates better along the water surface. So if those silent flickers and flashes aren't heat lightning, then what are they? Well, actual lightning! Generally, you can only hear thunder between 10 – 15 miles away. 'Heat lightning' has been used to describe the phenomenon when you see a flash of lightning in a cloud but dont hear the corresponding thunder clap. The only thing lightning and heat have in common is the blazing heat given off by a lightning strike! It can be five to ten times hotter than the surface of the sun.
So what is really going on? I'll get right to the point – there is no such thing as heat lightning.
Most people describe it as flickers and flashes of light, typically at night, with no thunder. This heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the pealing thunder we hear a short time after seeing a lightning flash. CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - One of the more common questions I have encountered over my years of covering weather revolves around heat lightning.
0 kommentar(er)
