How does thunder and lightning affect the earth?

Answer 1

A big thunderstorm full of lightning flashes and rolling thunder is one of nature’s most spectacular displays. It is at once scary, beautiful, awe-inspiring, and potentially deadly. Its affect on humans over the eons has been profound.

Early humans were probably more frightened than anything else of lightning and its accompanying thunder. They would have observed that occasionally an exposed person would be struck and killed by a bolt of lightning. They would also have observed that lightning can shatter big trees and cause fires. I have little doubt that early humans first learned to live with and control fire that was originally lightning-caused. Controlled use of fire is one of the major human advances, as important and the wheel and the plow.

I also have little doubt that some early religion was sparked (no pun intended) by lightning displays. For early humans, the spectacle of nature’s awesome power must have inspired a belief in some supernatural cause for something that was so beautiful, loud, frightening and deadly all at the same time.

By the late 18th Century, humans were beginning to try to understand electromagnetic forces. Benjamin Franklin, who was many things besides being a printer, is reputed to have flown a kite with a key in a thunderstorm. When the kite string was wet it became conductive and a spark jumped to Franklin’s finger from the string. The experiment proved that lighting was a form of static electricity, and it’s a minor miracle that Franklin wasn’t killed doing the experiment. The voltage varies with the length of the strike, but a 1000 foot bolt of lightning can produce about one billion volts, reach speeds of 100,000 miles per hour, and temperatures of 50,000° Fahrenheit. This is what causes the thunder. The air around the bolt is instantly superheated and expands rapidly, causing a shock wave which is the characteristic boom.

Franklin is also reputed to have figured out that one could construct lightning rods of copper to conduct lightning harmlessly into the ground instead of setting fire to buildings. Lightning rods are seen to this day on buildings around the world, and there are far fewer lightning caused house and barn fires as a result. Unfortunately, trees are not so protected and many forest fires are lightning sparked, especially when conditions are dry, as they often are in the far west. Pines are particularly vulnerable, having a taproot that extends into the water table. That’s one reason there are so many terrible fires in California, Oregon, Washington, Utah and many other western states. They’re not all caused by human stupidity. Some are started by lightning.

These are just a few of the more obvious reasons I can think of where lightning has affected humans. Thunder, on the other hand, has little effect beyond being scary. On the other hand, thunder can be useful as a rule-of-thumb method of determining how far away the center of a thunderstorm is. Every Boy and Girl Scout knows how to count the seconds from the flash to the boom (you can count seconds approximately by saying to yourself, “one one-thousand; two one-thousand; three one-thousand,” and so forth). The method works well enough for practical purposes. Because of the speed of sound at sea level, counting the seconds from flash to boom and dividing by 5 will give you a rough approximation of the distance to the storm. For example, if you count to 20 one-thousand before you hear the thunder, the storm is approximately four miles away, which is deadly close.

A word of caution, though: if you can hear thunder at anydistance, it’s time to seek shelter (the inside of your car is a good safe place). Lightning can strike at distances as great as 10 miles from a storm, and nearly 2000 people per year are injured by lighting strikes. Some die. You should not leave your sheltered place until you haven’t heard any thunder for 30 minutes.

Because lightning can kill, and children seem to instinctively know it, most children are frightened by thunder, but if you’re in a safe place (such as your family car) it can help to make up a story for the booming. When I was a child growing up in New York, my mother used to tell me that the rumbling was the sound of the crew of Henry Hudson (the explorer for whom the Hudson River is named) playing at bowls (Bowling) in the sky. As silly as that sounds to an adult, to this day whenever I hear the crash of thunder I think of the spirits of Henry Hudson’s men enjoying a little diversion in the blackening skies. And I feel a little safer.

Answer 2

it is dangoures than hurricsnes and tornadod

Answer 3

Lightning helps to reduce the electric field between a storm and the earth.

It also creates a small amount of ozone, which typically shows up several miles above the earths surface.