This Blog's History: The Thunder/Lightning Misconception

For this Friday's This Blog's History post I bring back to you the most popular post on this blog based on page views:  The Thunder/Lightning Misconception.  So what's the misconception?  Most of us, at some point in our childhood are taught how to determine the distance to a thunderstorm.  We're told that for every second you count between the lightning strike and the sound of thunder, the storm is 1 mile away.  For example, if you count 3 seconds between the lightning and the thunder, then the storm is 3 miles away.  Unfortunately this isn't correct.  The correct measure of distance is to count the number of seconds and divide by 5.  This gives you the approximate distance in miles.  Thus storms are much closer than most of us were taught as kids.  For more details, read the original post.

Thunder/Lightning Misconception