Abstract
IN NATURE, vol. xxvii. p. 576, a statement is made that the “opinion so long and generally entertained” that “sheet-lightning and the so-called summer or heat-lightning are nothing else than the reflection of, or the illumination produced by distant electrical discharges, is not supported by observation.” This statement surprises me, for I should have said that the opinion once commonly entertained that sheet-lightning is a distinct form of lightning unaccompanied by sound, is now for the most part rejected, the results of observation being distinctly against it. The question is an old one; but as the writer of the above statement only refers to the observations made at Oxford during the twenty-four years ending 1876, I will confine myself in the main to an examination of these. I must premise that I do not assert that lightning never occurs at such an altitude that the thunder accompanying it is not audible. In rare instances in Europe lightning is observed in the zenith, followed after an interval of twenty seconds or more by faint rolling thunder immediately overhead. It is therefore antecedently probable that lightning may occur at too great an elevation for the thunder to be heard at the earth's surface at all; and this is especially likely to happen in some of those thunderstorms within the tropics, the altitude of which is extremely great.
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LEY, W. Sheet-Lightning. Nature 28, 4 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028004a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028004a0
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