Interesting Facts About Lightning and Thunder
It's a powerful electric discharge, an astonishing flash of light with the deafening thunder following it. Lightning is quite a common phenomenon that is very dangerous and destructive, though, so make sure that in a thunderstorm you are in a safe place, for example, at home. But what else do you know about lightning bolts? People have studied lightning for a long time but have begun to make discoveries very recently, and so many things are still to reveal! Here you'll find the most interesting, amazing, sometimes even scary or funny facts about lightning that you might not know. For example, what is the temperature of lightning? What is the voltage and amperage of a lighting strike? Is it dangerous for planes?
Top 15 Amazing Facts
(Curious? Click on any element to discover more!)
The longest lightning bolt ever recorded is about 768 kilometers! It was detected in 2020 in the south USA.
The longest single flash of lightning was recorded in 2020 in Argentina. It had been lasting 17.1 seconds!
In Russian, most people mistakenly call a widespread lightning protection system ''thunder rod'' (gromootvod). In fact, the right term for this will be "lightning rod", which makes more sense.
The temperature of the lightning can reach up to 30 thousand degrees Celsius. For you to compare: the Sun's surface temperature is 5.5 times less.
A lightning strike is less dangerous for a human than is commonly believed. If timely help is provided, the mortality rate does not exceed 10%.
When lightning hits a dry tree, it usually ignites. As for the wet one, a temperature spike results in instant water evaporation. Then the water vapor literally explodes the tree from the inside, splitting it along the fibers from the roots to the top.
A car, train, or bus becomes a kind of Faraday cage that protects passengers and drivers from lightning. This does not apply to vehicles with bimini tops, though, where the contour remains open.
There is such an energy source as harvesting lightning energy. This is a very complex way to produce clean energy by capturing lightning and directing its energy into the power grid. Such power grids can reduce environmental issues and may become a cost-efficient energy decision in the future.
Catatumbo lightning is an extraordinary phenomenon in Venezuela, where they have up to 140-160 thunderstorms per year. There you can see up to 280 strikes in just one hour!
Thunderstorms rarely come in winter due to extremely low air humidity, poor heating of the Earth's atmosphere, and minimal solar activity.
Earth is not the only planet in the Solar System where lightning occurs — it has also been detected on Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Saturn.
Planes all over the world get struck by lightning almost daily. Every aircraft is hit by a bolt of lightning on average 1-2 times per year. But thanks to lightning protection covering all over the plane, the crew, passengers, and equipment are safe.
The lightning voltage ranges from several tens of millions to a billion Volts, while the amperage can reach 100 thousand Amperes!
Although a chance of a lightning strike hitting a person is very small, Roy Sullivan has been struck seven times in his lifetime and stayed alive. He was even enlisted in the Guinness World Records for this.
Lightning strike (return stroke) travels at an incredible speed of up to 100 thousand kilometers per second. This is only three times less than the speed of light.
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