We often read of an approaching tornado described as producing a sound not unlike that of a freight train. The same could be said of a thunderstorm approaching from a distance in these woods. It starts as a dull roar, such as a large truck makes as it lumbers down this dirt road. But unlike the truck, whose noise quickly fades, the rumble of an approaching thunderstorm builds steadily to an almost deafening roar, its path clearly visible in the treetops.
One day last week, I rushed to a window just in time to see the wind’s effects as it descended upon this place. The treetops were whipped into a mad frenzy, some of them bending halfway to the ground. Pine needles blew against the window screen, and dead branches flew about everywhere. I’d been hearing rumblings of thunder for some time, but now it exploded into a series of rapid-fire lightning flashes with a few loud cracks to indicate that, somewhere, a tree had supplied it with a pathway to the ground. The rain eventually came, and the storm lasted nearly an hour before moving toward the east and out to sea.
While I always worry during a powerful storm, it’s a comfort to realize anew each time that densely packed trees act as buffers, deflecting the wind’s fury. The more isolated trees, standing alone and unprotected, are at greatest risk of toppling over, but in actuality, any tree, despite its proximity to its neighbors, can serve as a conduit for the incredible electrical energy generated during a thunderstorm.
Lightning seeks the shortest route to the ground, and I have long marvelled at how it decides which tree it will recruit for that purpose, so a bit of research was in order. A bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 140,000 miles per hour and reach a temperature close to 54,000 degrees F. The air closest to a bolt of lightning can reach 36,000 degrees F, and thunder is the sound produced as this heated air expands to produce an atmospheric shock wave.
Though the jury is still out as to how or why this happens, it’s thought that water droplets forming in storm clouds generate both positive and negative electrical charges. When the two collide, lightning is produced. While the flash and thunder occur almost simultaneously, light travels much more rapidly than sound, so we always see the flash long before we hear the thunder, shedding some validity to the common perception that, the closer together the two occur, the closer the lightning is to us.
While we can afford to be complacent about certain aspects of our lives on this planet, we would do well to develop a healthy respect for one of the most powerful and uncontrollable forces on earth, for there no stopping a thunderstorm once it gets underway. Our only choice is to seek shelter as best we can and wait it out, giving nature all the space she needs for her summer light shows.
Here in the woods, it is always exciting to hear a storm approaching, to see the sky beyond the trees darken and hear the thunder’s first grumblings, an experience that is all the more meaningful after a string of hot days. For as the storm moves away to spend itself over the ocean, these woods come alive once again with freshly washed color and the sweet, rich scent of newly quenched earth.
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.
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