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Thunderless lightning...

King of the Americas

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K
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Nov 15, 2001
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6,513
...what the hell is up with this!?

'I' thought that when the electricity went through the air, it traveled faster than the speed of sound, split the air, then *CLAP*

The air slams back together and you get 'thunder'. As a child I remember counting "one-one-thousand", two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand" to measure the approximate distance (one second per mile).

Last night, LOTS of lightning flashes, bolts, and balls but NO following thunder.

In North Texas, Cooke County at about 11-12:00.

Some of these were very close and I kept expecting to hear that familiar clap, but few came if at all.

What causes this?
 
I'm not sure, but my guess would be: thermal layers. Based on my vast knowledge of undersea warfare (ok - I read "Hunt For Red October") I know that thermal layers in the ocean can block sonar and other sound sources. So why couldn't a thermal layer in the atmosphere prevent the delicate sound of thunder (sly PF reference) from reaching the ground?

Reb
 
Wow...

....good one, Reb.

Okay, that makes sense, a little.

I admit, I stopped at this plce before doing even ONE search on this, so it could very well be a regular thing.

But I gotta say, these flashes were near and far away, high, and quite low. I invision 'thermal layers' as having some kind of plain existance in form. These flashes, bolts, and balls would have interupted several layers...

What else you got?
 
That was the same storm system that blew thru Tulsa last night also. At around 2 am a bolt struck a block away and scared the ^%#@ out of me!! Nothing quiet there, but I did notice quite a lot of lightening after that with very little thunder, dozens of flashes that made no sound or only a small rumble. I am kinda interested in this also :)

-Joxter-
 
GREAT...

....someone else has seen something similiar.

This MUST not be an uncommon thing.

No, 'some' lightning made thunder, but it was sparse and when it did manage to fire it didn't 'match' the brightness of the lightning.

There was just something very odd about the whole thing.
 
I just did this search on google:

thunderless lightning, scientific explaination, thunder, lightning, sound studies

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And NOTHING...?

---

Okay, I have now began my more specific research...
 
From:
Rain Thunder and Lightining

"Lightning heats the air in its path to around 30,000 Celsius, which causes the air to expand very fast (like popcorn). Thunder is the sound of the hot air expanding. "

If the lightning was taking place at a very high altitude, it may not have made much noise, and what noise it did make fizzled before it reached your ears...
 
MY bad...

NOT air clapping back together. It is air 'popping' from being super heated.

So is there such a thing as cold lightning?
 
There have been plenty of times that the sound of thunder, or the lack of it, has surprised me in relation to the brightness of the lightning. So I don't think it's a rare thing.

Rather than it being a difference in the lightning itself, I'd guess that it has to do with the conditions in the air between you and the bolt. Wind direction and speed would, I'd guess, play the biggest role. I imagine factors like air temperature, differences in temperature between different regions of the atmosphere (as Reb suggested), and the ability of intervening objects to reflect or muffle the noise, would all be factors.

Also, I think it's possible for lightning bolts to seem much closer than they actually are, so an observer might mistakenly expect the thunder to be exceptionally loud.
 
I always thought it was 5 seconds per mile. Doesn't sound travel at about 1100 ft/sec? A mile a second would 5280 ft/sec.
 
jimlintott said:
I always thought it was 5 seconds per mile. Doesn't sound travel at about 1100 ft/sec? A mile a second would 5280 ft/sec.
Click to expand...

You've got very good ballpark numbers there. The speed of sound does vary with atmospheric pressure, altitude, frequency (dispersion) and humidity.

Sound transmission is nothing near as clean a mechanism as electrical propagation through a wire or via EM wave.
 
I think that I have seen similar lightening, especialy the 'chain lightening' up in the sky. Seems that maybe you check with your local weather station to find out how far away the strikes were, they may actually have been on the horizon.

Peace
 
I've experienced similar in the Philippines. An incredible lightning storm (2-3 seconds between each flash) and yet no thunder at all. Very beautiful and relaxing to watch. Relaxing, because the random bolts of millions of Volts were clearly happening far way.

Nice link, Denise.
 
Okay...

...so far, the research I have read and all of the others I have spoken with say that 'distance' is the cause of this phenomenia.

Admittedly, I watch the Weather Channel a LOT. I actually enjoy it, knowing what should happen and what radar images preduce what results.

I watched closely as the green, red, and yellow radar images marched across Cooke County as I stood behind a covered porch and screen door. I saw many flashes, bolts, and seemingly 'balls' or bolts that spiraled over themselves. I also heard thunder, but it was sparse, and it didn't match the lightning at all, if it even fired.

I have watched Texas thunderstorms my whole life of almost 30 years, and I can't recall seeing one quite like this, except for a tornado I survived through that hit Lawton Oklahoma. I think that was like an F-3, but I'm not sure.

I want to say the ceiling that night was around 3400 feet, but some of the lightning looked a lot closer than that. The tall trees in the neighborhood prevent me from getting a good look at the horizon in a 360 degree view, so it would be very difficult to see for 10 miles, much less MORE than 10 miles.

I have heard several people use the term 'heat lightning' when referring to these thunderless lightning events, and here is what Denise provided:

"Heat lightning: Flashes too far away for observer to hear the thunder. Like sheet lightning, these flashes are created by lightning bolts, but are in thunderstorms more than 10 miles away. Trees, buildings and urban noise can cut this distance to less than five miles. It's called heat lightning because it is seen more frequently on hot summer nights when the sky overhead is clear. Often, air molecules and dust particles in the atmosphere refract the light coming from distant lightning, making the bolts or flashes appear orange."

ALL of the flashes I saw were white, or very light blue in color, not orange, and appeared to be right overhead.

More information from actual meterologists soon!
 
Interesting coincidence. I've just returned from a holiday on the North See coast (Fanoe, for anybody familiar with Danish geography). While there (on 4/6 to be precise) there was a very violent thunderstorm during the late evening. During long periods there were about two flashes per second, ... more like a continuous flickering! However, the sound was not very strong, only a deep remote rumble and a low roar like a formation of jet fighters doing aerobatics in the distance. This was an otherwise quiet evening at the beach, with little wind and only a slight drizzle, so the thunder was clearly audible, but the sound of strong wind, pouring rain or city traffic might easily have drowned most of it out, in which case I would have also experienced "silent lightning"

So what was the reason for it? Well, while it was still coming on, and individual flashes were longer between, I timed a flash right overhead. The sound took nearly 10 seconds to arrive. At appr. 330 m/sec that means that the thing happened at the altitude of about 3 kilometers! And this was one of the brighter and noisier ones.

So my guess is that the effect comes from the lightning being at high altitude.

http://www.dmi.dk/vejr/lyn/data/200306042359.arkivlyn.jpg

On this mapping of lightning strikes from that day, you kan get an ompression of the activity. Actually, there is a distinct hole in the pattern right where I was, with only two strikes in the vicinity, but I can assure you that the firework was very much present! So apparantly it was lifted by some local weather system, probably thermals over the hot coast (I'm just speculating here).

Hans
 
To Hans:

Thank you for your report, it was interresting to hear your account and your perception of your environment.

My experience differed, in that many of the 'very bright' strikes and downward bolts had NO following thunder what so ever. And the rain and wind were quite minimal.

Like I said I've watched Texas thunderstorms closely for about 2 decades, and the other night was quite unusual.

I found the thunder on that night be be 'sparse and not matching the lightning at all'.

Even this morning, we were doused with another rain storm, but this one DID have loud booming & cracking thunder.

---

So in total, all that we have here is 'altitude', and that the strikes I was seeing weren't close at all.

I've gotta say, I can't accept this as the explaination. I am not syaing that I won't, I just haven't seen or read enough on the matter yet.
 
Hail to the King,

Hey I live in Fort Worth and watched that storm, cool stuff, but it did not seem that abnormal to me, I SWEAR I've seen stuff like that before.

Teaxs has the best thunderstorms.
 
In North Texas...

...I have seen LOTS of thunderstorms and lightning, and I've never seen any that didn't make any noise.

What I saw the other night SHOULD have results in lots of loud claps, cracks, and booms, and at the very least some distant rumbles.

What I actually heard was silence, and some mismatched partial hits of thunder.

I LIKE to count the seconds and try to miscalculate the distance between me and the strikes, but something prevented me from doing this, this time.

I am finding difficulty associating mere distance and thermal layers as being the reasons why I saw thunderless lightning.

I am not saying that these weren't the real causes, I am just saying that I'll need to see what I saw again and then apply this new information.

However, I must add that up until now, all of my 'testing & observing' led me to conclude that 'thunderless or silent' lightning was new and quite odd to me. I HAVE seen distant thunderstorms on the horizon with flashes I could hear, but this was right overhead and all around...
 
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