WHAT CAUSES ROLLING THUNDER AFTER A VERY LOUD THUNDER CLAP?

There are many possible explanations for this phenomenon. Here are some of them.

1. Lightning strikes a cloud directly over your area. The cloud produces electricity, and this electricity passes along the ground until it reaches the Earth’s surface. Those objects become charged if they hit something solid, like trees or buildings. When they do, static electricity builds up on their surfaces, causing them to attract each other. Static buildup on nearby objects begins to pull in the air around them, generating wind. As the air rushes toward the thing, it picks up water vapour in its path. When the wind gets to your location, it contains enough moisture to condense into clouds. Thunder sounds as these tiny droplets collide with each other.

2. Electric fields at work. Like lightning, electric fields can pass through the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface. Electrons may flow from one point to another if a strong enough lot exists between two points. On the way, the electrons pick up speed, developing so much kinetic energy that they accelerate and hit the gas molecules in their path. When the electron meets a molecule of oxygen, it knocks off a little energy. That energy is enough to stimulate the atom’s outer shell of electrons, making it jump to higher orbitals. The result is a massive flash of blue-white light called plasma. Because of the extreme temperature, the plasma expands outward and cools rapidly, giving rise to the sound we hear as thunder.

3. Relativity ! 😉 Very rapid air expansion causes a shock wave which we experience as sound. In cloud to ground lightening, the length of each stroke is relatively short and vertical so we hear one boom because all of the sound comes from about the same distance at about the same time. In cloud to cloud lightening, strokes can be miles long. The strike can be very short, but it takes more time for sound to travel through air and the ends of a strike can be miles apart and miles away. The phenomenon can, and often does, occur without visual flash from your relative position.

Continuous rolling thunder without visible lightning can occur due to several reasons. Here are a few possibilities:

  1. Distant Lightning: Lightning can be occurring beyond the horizon or obscured by clouds, making it difficult to see the lightning flashes. However, the sound of thunder can travel much farther than the light from the lightning, so you may hear the thunder even if you cannot see the lightning.
  2. Topography: Sound waves from thunder can bounce off obstacles like mountains, buildings, or even temperature inversions in the atmosphere, causing the sound to reverberate and create a continuous rolling effect.
  3. Storm Structure: Some thunderstorms have a structure that can produce continuous rolling thunder. For example, a squall line or a line of thunderstorms can produce a continuous rumble of thunder as the storm system moves along.
  4. Rain: Heavy rain can act as a muffler, dampening the sound of thunder and causing it to sound more continuous and muffled.
  5. Wind Shear: Variations in wind speed and direction at different altitudes can cause the sound of thunder to be stretched out and produce a rolling effect.
  6. Temperature Inversions: Inversions where warm air overlays cooler air can trap sound waves and cause them to travel further and create a rolling effect.

If you are experiencing continuous rolling thunder without visible lightning, it could be due to one or a combination of these factors.

 

A lightning bolt can be miles long. Each kink in the bolt emits a pulse of sound and the combined effect of many pulses arriving simultaneously is a continuous rumble.

The sound effects immediately after a strike.

The prolonged rumble comes from the entire length of the bolt. It can require many seconds for the final sound to reach you. by which time another bolt may have struck, so the sounds overlap. If the bolts are hidden by clouds, you may not see the lightning at all, or only a diffuse flash.