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Lightning can happen during snowstorms, hailstorms, sandstorms, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. Once in a while, lightning even seems to come out of clear blue skies. Out of all these possible scenarios, the one most likely to happen is the thunderclouds. A specific type of thundercloud is the thunderhead. Thunderheads are the towering clouds you see during thunderstorms. In addition to lightning these mammoth clouds can bring rain, hail, sleet, snow, and strong winds. Another name for a thunderhead cloud is a cumulonimbus (cumulous + nimbus) cloud. .
There are several types of lightning. They may be ball-shaped and float through the air or roll around on the ground. The names of the different lightning are: heat lightning, bead and rocket lightning, ribbon lightning, and ball lightning. .
Thunder is what comes after lightning. Thunder is the loud and explosive sound, which is produced by a lightning strike. The lightning strike produces an enormous amount of heat, which causes the air around it to be heated to about 10,000 degrees Celsius within a few millionths of a second. Such a quick and enormous heating causes the air molecules to move very fast due to the huge amount of energy they receive, and they quickly and forcefully push each other apart. This creates a huge wave of compressed air, or a sound wave, that quickly moves from the spot of the lightning bolt to other directions, producing the sound we call "thunder".
Thunder can usually be heard for a relatively long amount of time compared to the split-of-a-second appearance of lightning. This happens due to several reasons. First of all, lightning is not straight: it has an irregular shape and many different strikes at once usually overlap each other. Also, the air expands non-uniformly to all directions, and objects often interfere with the flow of sound. Not only these factors contribute to a prolonged duration of the sound, they also create sound that arrives at different pitches and loudness to the listener.
