Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Lightning Question?

On October 2, 2004 Three friends and I summited Whitney via the MR. About half way up the coulior above Iceberg lake, and too late in the day to go back down the MR safely in my opinion, it started snowing on us. We summited to a cloud shrouded peak with falling snow and one to two inches of snow on the ground. Because of the bad weather we stayed at the summit briefly and then got the heck out of Dodge. On the way down from the summit to the trail crest I witnessed the sky light up a few times, but I saw no lightning bolt and heard no thunder. Later while driving home I brought it up to the guys I was with. One of them said that he witnessed the same thing twice. The other said that I was probably hallucinating due to the exhaustion that I was feeling from both the climb and the altitude. I don't believe I imagined it. Is it possible to have lightning without the sound of thunder? I know that sometimes sheet lightning can cause the sky to light up. I welcome any responses that can shed light on this.

Rafael...

I believe I once read that you cannot hear thunder from lightning over 20 miles away. I know that I have seen lighting at times without hearing thunder (particularly over the ocean). You might want to do a web search on thunder and see what you can come up with.

A more general question concerning lightning. When I was preparing for Longs' Peak last summer the hot topic in my reading was lightning - storms rolling in every afternoon and the importance of being well off the peak before these storms arrive. I have not seen quite the attention to this with Whitney. I know lightning remains a concern, but is the frequency/consistency of afternoon lightning storms less in the Sierras versus the Rockies? Is it something one should count on encountering

BK-One should never "count" on any type of weather but the Rockies do receive more consistent convective activity than the Sierras. This is due to many variables but storms do develop around Long's Peak with such consistency that people facetiously say, "you could set your watch by them." The Sierras can also produce thunderstorm activity but not with that degree of consistency. The Sierras can have many days or even weeks of relatively stable weather without any thunderstorm activity. One way to monitor what may transpire is determinining if any moisture is circulating up from the Gulf of California. This humid air often will be conducive to thunderstorm activity. July and August and about the first half of September are especially susceptible to this phenomenon. This period is also known as the Monsoon Season. A good practice is to be prepared whatever mountain range your in and know when to abort your summit plans.

If a lightning strike is a sufficient distance from the observer, sound from the strike will not be heard. These silent bolts are called heat lightning and in the tunderstorm prone areas are quite common on a summer night
The movement of sound in the atmosphere depends on the atmospheric properties of the air such as temperature and density and if it was snowing as you said then the distance the sound could travel would be very limited.
What you probably saw was lightning but not very close lightning, possible 15 or 20 miles away.
The other possibility is UFOs but they are uncommon that time of year...just kidding..
Sheet lightning is another variable of lightning and the theory is the lightning is within a cloud so the actual lighting bolt is obscured by the cloud so only a flash of light is seen. Again if the distance is too great no sound is heard.

Lightning is a very high discharge of energy over a very short period of time and causes rapid expansion of gasses in the air that we hear as thunder. At the distances that you are talking about, a few miles, you would hear it. I've seen a buildup of static electricity at high altitudes that looks like a faint glow prior to an actual lightning strike and you may have seen something like that. I once saw it on my ice ax, which was a clear signal to get the heck out of there.

Sam, the glow you saw is very commom with static build-up in the air. It is called "Saint Elmo's Fire" I have seen it in pitons on the NW face of Half Dome, very scary when you are 1 1/2 days from the top or bottom!

If you know anyone who has traveled in a sailboat on a long off-shore trip they can tell you a lot of stories about St. Elmo's Fire.

Randonnee- It is even more scary when you are in the middle of a fast developing thunderstorm at 15,000 feet on a 5.10 face.

SS