Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
Anyhow, I happened to be looking at a clock when half an hour ago there was a lightning flash. 3ish seconds later I heard the thunder - which then carried on (decreasing in loudness steadily) for a good 45 seconds. It did the same several more times over the next ten minutes.
So what was happening here?
Is the lightning event rippling down the length of a chain of embedded CBs?, or is this some accoustic effect causing a steadily decreasing echo? Something else?
Anybody with greater met knowledge than mine have any idea?
G
With the numbers you quote, I feel confident that echoes, etc. from a single stroke can be excluded. Attenuation over the path lengths implied would be fearsome.
I've seen video taken from very high altitude (say 200-ish miles, as it was taken by astronauts) which clearly showed examples of highly correlated lightning behavior, but I've not read a good discussion on either the precise form of the non-randomness nor its cause.
I can't find video on the net matching my memory.
NASA shuttle lightning video The three shuttle videos here show some correlation, but not the degree I remember, nor that required for the effect you heard. But if it did that every time, it would sound like that every time, which it does not.