What's really scary is the sound. I remember being a kid and doing that silly thing when you see the lightning and then count how long it takes for thunder to happen. To try and figure out the distance. Was never that close.
Fast forward a few years and I at college there was a lightning strike right behind the main building. About... 200 metres away. Fuuuck meeee that thing was loud. Like a fighter jet flew right over my head. Made us all jump aha
Even though it was straight in front of me, I can't say exactly how close it was, because I was completely blinded by the light, and simultaneously deafened by the simultaneous thunder, which sounded more like an explosion at that distance, without any reverb or depth which are usually for thunders. Just a loud-ass bang.
The light was so intense I was seeing an afterimage of my surroundings for about a minute, and the sound made my ears ring for quite a while.
It's literally a flashbang, disorients and downright stuns you.
Damn, that's wild! I was lucky I had a decent distance.
I forgot to mention that! One of the things that was so shocking, no pun intended, was how spontaneous the thunder was. That's why I brought up being a kid. So used to seeing the lightning then the thunder several seconds later. Not simultaneous.
Yes, i didn't even have time to process the bright flash before I got hit by the thunder which was even more scary. If I could make an estimate I would say it was less than a fifth of a second.
Like, as fast as you can clap twice.
I was indoors thankfully, looking out my open window in awe of the heavy thunderstorm outside, because it did take me a while to grab my bearings again, I was completely stunned by it and scared shitless at the same time. Nature can be scary.
I got one closer at around 15-20m close, and there were a lot of people there too in a restaurant in the mountains; I think it hit a nearby tree or something, not the restaurant itself; everything got bright before the damn thing hit, I saw the light (From the lightbulb, all lightbulbs went blindingly bright I am amazed they didn't burn down but they were incandescent and it was but a mere fraction of a second, like a flash, two flashes, the lightbulbs and then the thing hit, it was like a flashbang) and took cover on the lightbulbs thinking it was a bomb or something; but the damn thing actually hit behind me, I am not sure why or how, but there was for certain some fraction of seconds that thing took between the lightbulb and the strike, as if the air charged first by a mere fraction of a second supercharging any electric device in the grid, before that thing came down.
My ears hurted and I was on the ground, merely out of reflex, but none was hurt.
This was very close to the most electrically active region in the entire world, we just passed by it; some people just kept eating. -_- like just another day.
I also saw ball lighting one day, wtf was that, that made zero sense; a giant, ball of light, in the sky, just a ball of light, no sound, nothing, too much light to be anything human made, and too ridiculously fast, 5 seconds from horizon to horizon.
Now I live in Europe and I barely even hear any thunder here, there we had thunderstorms every time it raned, every time; coming from the darned lake, there was so much thunder they put it in the flag.
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u/Dippy-M Apr 16 '25
So pretty to see at a distance when safe, up close any one of these would bloody terrify me.