How to Calculate Lightning Strike Distance
Lightning is a natural occurrence that can be extremely dangerous. Knowing how to estimate the distance you are from a thunderstorm is an important skill for staying safe during storm season. Pinpointing the exact location of a storm is a job reserved for meteorologists who use complex radar equipment. However, there is a way to estimate your distance from a lightning strike using only your eyes, ears and some fingers to help with counting.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Move to a safe vantage point from the thunderstorm for observation.
-
2
Start your stopwatch -- or begin counting to yourself -- as soon as you see a flash of lightning. Stop counting when you hear a clap of thunder after the lightning strike.
-
3
Divide the number of seconds you counted between lightning flash and thunder by 5. This is the distance between you and the lightning, measured in miles.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Don't assume that you are safe just because lightning is several miles away. Even a storm that is many miles away can produce dangerous lightning in your area. A typical lightning bolt is several miles long, and lightning has been known to strike as far as 25 miles from an active thunderstorm.
Be mindful that the distance estimate here is only a rough approximation of the actual distance between yourself and a bolt of lightning.
The actual speed of sound varies with temperature, so the accuracy of the estimated distance will vary as air temperature near the storm rises and falls.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images
