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AnswerDepends on where it is heard. In the barren desert with no mountain ranges, it will simply go "boom" and is gone. When surrounded by mountain ranges, the sound echoes off those hard surfaces and heads toward another. It then sounds much fiercer ... so it all depends where it is heard.

Also, sound waves travel with slightly different velocities in air depending on their frequency. Higher frequencies travel faster than lower frequencies. Lightning makes sound over a wide range of frequencies, so the higher pitches get to you first. This is why thunder will crack first (high frequency) and then rumble later (low frequencies). It is also why the time-length of the thunder can be used to determine how far away the lightning was. The farther away the lightning, the more spread out the higher frequencies are from the lower frequencies.

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15y ago

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