Silent Lightning
Silent lightning also occurs where airborne matter muffles the thunder, such as heavy snow in winter storms (thundersnow) and dust and sand storms. In some instances, heavy falling snow has silenced thunder from cloud to ground lightning strikes as close as one to two miles (1.6 to 3.2 km) from the observer and severe dust storms are even more effective in many cases.
Read more about this topic: Heat Lightning
Famous quotes containing the words silent and/or lightning:
“Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married estate.... Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones.”
—Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)
“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.”
—Harriet Tubman (1821–1913)