This morning I was awakened by a loud crashing sound. At 8am, after not getting to sleep until after 2am. The crashing sound was accompanied by a preceding flash of light. This, my friends, was an electrical storm. We had a smaller one the previous night. These sorts of storms are a rare occurrence in this area so when it happens I get very excited, But not so much when it wakes me up in the middle of my sleep. I wish I could have been excited about it. At one point I felt the thunder shake the house. Pretty intense. Both times I traveled to Colombia, during the many flights I took to get there and back, I saw an electrical storm from the airplane window. Those are crazy. There are multiple flashes of lighting every second. It's like this huge bundle of clouds and flashing light. Supposedly while I was gone in Colombia, there was a massive storm in Portland, like the thunder was setting of car alarms. I am sad I missed it, but whatever, I was in South America. What's better than that?
From Wikipedia:
Lightning is an electrical discharge that occurs in a thunderstorm. It can be seen in the form of a bright streak (or bolt) from the sky. Lightning occurs when an electrical charge is built up within a cloud. When a large enough charge is built up, a large discharge will occur and can be seen as lightning. The temperature of a lightning bolt can be five times hotter than the surface of the sun. Although the lightning is extremely hot, the duration is short and 90% of strike victims survive. Contrary to the popular idea that lightning does not strike twice in the same spot, some people have been struck by lightning over three times, and skyscrapers like the Empire State Building have been struck numerous times in the same storm. The loud bang that is heard is the super heated air around the lightning bolt expanding at the speed of sound. Because sound travels slower than light the flash is seen before the bang, although both occur at the same moment.
A few weeks ago while I was doing some research on lightning, I was trying to find slow motion videos of ground to cloud lightning. I did eventually find one, among others that are just as awesome. Take a look.
From Wikipedia:
Lightning is an electrical discharge that occurs in a thunderstorm. It can be seen in the form of a bright streak (or bolt) from the sky. Lightning occurs when an electrical charge is built up within a cloud. When a large enough charge is built up, a large discharge will occur and can be seen as lightning. The temperature of a lightning bolt can be five times hotter than the surface of the sun. Although the lightning is extremely hot, the duration is short and 90% of strike victims survive. Contrary to the popular idea that lightning does not strike twice in the same spot, some people have been struck by lightning over three times, and skyscrapers like the Empire State Building have been struck numerous times in the same storm. The loud bang that is heard is the super heated air around the lightning bolt expanding at the speed of sound. Because sound travels slower than light the flash is seen before the bang, although both occur at the same moment.
A few weeks ago while I was doing some research on lightning, I was trying to find slow motion videos of ground to cloud lightning. I did eventually find one, among others that are just as awesome. Take a look.
And that concludes my lesson in nature for the week.
Oh, and please tell me I am going to get the job working for these people. I would be so happy if I did.
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I did a lot of research about them shortly after I first saw one. It's kind of hard when you only have a description to search off of. Took about two days to actually find out what it was. Then Wiki saved the day.