However, the traditional newspaper (if there really is such an animal) is threatened by shrinking readership. Television is focused on entertainment, even when it dresses it up as news.. Radio is threatened by satellites. All are confronted with the frictionless distribution enabled by the Internet, the disruptive effects of digital information. None have figured out a business model that pays for content at today's rates.
Thunder is a compression wave and will dissipate with time and distance. Under excellent conditions, thunder can be heard about 12 miles away from the lightning strike. However most of the time conditions arenât this good and we usually canât hear thunder any more than about 5 miles away.
If youâre nearby to a lightning strike, you may have heard thunder as a really loud crack, almost like the sound of a whip being cracked. But, most of the time we hear thunder as a loud, long rumble. In fact, the crack sound is the direct sound of the lightning near us, reaching our ears. The more common rumbling effect happens when thunder echoes off objects all around us. This happens a lot in towns and cities, where there are lots of buildings for the noise to bounce off.