Monday, December 5, 2011

Wondering where the drought went.

I can honestly say that it doesn’t look like drought conditions this morning. Yesterday morning, the front blew in and with it came cool air and drizzle. The rain was so light that if you ran fast enough you could get from the car to the porch without getting wet. I admit, a few times it rained a little harder than that. Then a little before 05:00 this morning, a good strong rain hit accompanied by thunder and lightning. Well, to be exact, it would have to have been lightning and thunder. You can’t have thunder unless you have lightning first. So why do most people say “thunder and lightning”? Now say it real fast and see which way you normally say it. Let us know, I am curious. Maybe I am the only one that says it backwards.



You do know that it takes sound almost 5 seconds to travel a mile. At sea level it takes about 4.6875 seconds to travel a mile. So, if you see a flash, you can count the seconds and know how far away the lightning is and therefore, the major part of the storm. I do the “one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four, and put one finger up, then say it over again and put the second finger up, and so on and so forth. The time it takes to extend a finger makes up the extra 0.6975 seconds (grin). At my age I need the fingers to keep track of the miles. Works for me, so you try it when you have the next thunder storm; or is it a lightning storm?


You all have a great Monday, you hear?

5 comments:

  1. Trust me, the drought is still around, this is just a shower compared to what we need!!

    Tell ya what about Lighting and Thunder.. When it strikes the tree outside your window , there is NO time between the flash and the Sound! :-)

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  2. Ben's right. You've got quite a water debt to make up. I couldn't do any counting when the tree in my yard got zapped. Couldn't do much at all for a bit there.

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  3. It may not be much, but I'll take what we can get!

    Off and on for 2 days...so it seems like more than it probably is.

    As far as the naming, I always say thunder and lightening, but I don't know why! Just habit, I guess!

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  4. It's thunder and lightening,,here too. Not gonna try to explain it, but what you see, is the flash actually going up. Research that,,DD. I had to, to believe it,,,lololol.

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  5. yep,What Trouble says.

    Does lightning strike from the sky down, or the ground up?
    The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up. A typical cloud-to-ground flash lowers a path of negative electricity (that we cannot see) towards the ground in a series of spurts. Objects on the ground generally have a positive charge. Since opposites attract, an upward streamer is sent out from the object about to be struck. When these two paths meet, a return stroke zips back up to the sky. It is the return stroke that produces the visible flash, but it all happens so fast - in about one-millionth of a second - so the human eye doesn't see the actual formation of the stroke.
    Don't believe me? Just look at the tree that was stuck, the top and down the trunk will be blown out, that's where the current Jumped UP.. If the strike had come down the base of the tree would be blown out, not the top.

    Learned that years ago in an advanced electronics class.

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