Abstract
CAPT. C. J. P. CAVE'S letter in NATURE of May 23 reminds me of a storm at Little Shelford in 1915. I had waited for it to stop before I cycled in to Cambridge, and I started when there was clear blue sky in the zenith. An unexpected flash struck from the rear edge of the cloud before I had reached the garden gate, and damaged a tree within a hundred yards of me, near the village post office. The thunder was. almost immediate, but was definitely preceded by a noise which I said was like “a sudden rending of calico”; Mr. Cave's “swishing” noise would also describe it. I was working on sound-ranging at the time, and thought the cause of the noise was probably analogous to the explosion wave, travelling faster than sound, which disturbs sound-ranging calculations for the last few yards of a gun's position.
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BALLS, W. The Sound of Lightning. Nature 115, 912 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115912c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115912c0
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