Awesome pictures!

Has anyone noticed that the radio signal is disrupted with the flash and not the thunder? I find this curious as one would think it is the air vibration that is the main energy that radiates from such an event... so in fact we have the crack of the discharge that emanates light, sound waves, and in fact some kind of radiation like phenomena as well? I wonder if this radiation signal could be read (how far does it travel from the point source), and what could be learned from that if anything? Could this be mother natures way of communicating as well as the physical event we all witness?

One can think fairly deeply about this, but at the end of the day its just another fascinating phenomena of the world we live in....

Eagleone, I'm no scientist. But the release of the electrical charge is visible by the lightning, and thunder is just the sound of it. Sound travels much slower.

The electrical charge is what disturbs the radio waves, the thunder likely has longer waves, thus does not effect the radio waves.

you see the flash before you hear the sound because light travels faster (approximately 300,000 km each second, in vacuum or air) than sound (343 meters per second)
At the time of the electrical discharge, vast amounts of energy known as electro-magnetic (EM) are released and that is what causes interference with radio signals, not the vibration. The vibration is simply sound resonance.

When I was a little kid, my daddy taught me to count the seconds after I see the flash to the time I hear the first part of the thunder. Then he taught me to divide the seconds by 5 to get miles.

When I grew older, and we started to use metric, I had to relearn that equation and divide by 3 to get the appoximate distance in kilometres.

Since radio signals travel at the same speed as light, not the speed of sound, the signal is disrupted during the actual lightning strike.

This is all due to global warming. Better hike taxes.

For those interested a bit more in what mother nature is actually doing when she sends lightning down from the sky onto the land, here is some of the latest research from NASA's point of view.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/image_lightning.html

The sound you hear on the radio are the radio waves caused by the lightning.

Also it states that "When magnetic storms caused by violent solar activity inject a new supply of high-speed particles into the safe zone, lightning clears them away in a few days to a few weeks, according to the team."

Actually not far from the truth there gamblor. It is due to the suns radiation which is the reason why the earth is not a frozen sphere.

When air molecules moves it will rub against other things such as other air particles, water vapour, the earth or whatever you can imagine. When the rub, they get charged, much like what happens when some walk across a carpet or when some comb their hair. These are generally small charges and hardly noticeable until you wish your hair wouldn't stand on end. This happens all the time when one kind of atom rubs against another. Some effects are more noticeable than others because of the different types of atoms or molecules involved.
So we don't get a discharge that can cause some damage when charges build-up, we ground objects so the charge can move into the Earth or another large object where it is spread out and weakened. We now ground our rugs so we don't get a shock when we walk across it or we ground tanker trucks so a charge doesn't build up and blow up the truck.
Lightening is the same, just on a larger scale. Currents in the air move around rubbing molecules in the atmosphere. Some charges land up on the ground and some adhere to clouds, trees or your home. They tend to concentrate on objects that stand up like towers or trees. It is more difficult for the charge to move through the air than a metal, so when it does move (and discharge) through the air, the charge is very large. It may be a 1 000 000 volts. When the discharge (electro-magnetic force) moves through the air it moves with the speed of light (light is electro-magnetic radiation.) So the light reaches us very quickly.
Sound is also produced because the air is vibrated. When air is vibrated, it produces sound and we here it. Sound travels much slower than light, about 333 m/s. The light reaches us almost simultaneously and the sound a bit later.
I remember we used to count after we saw a lightening bolt up to when we heard the thunder clap to determine how far the storm was away. Only once in my life were they simultaneous and I was frightened.
And that is today's science lesson.
Great pictures. By the way, I watched a TV show some years ago about people who were studying thunder storms and taking pictures of lightening bolts. They would chase the storms across the countryside. A very dangerous job.

Sure is a lot of smart people out there, so why is it with all this smart people, we have to have a useless twit like Dick Harris representing us in Ottawa

1) no one else stood up,
2) Joe Q public is given few other choices
3) it is a party system with only 3 viable parties playing

Or maybe Mr Harris is as smart as the next guy (read you all) but because he got elected, people like to call him stupid (especially when they disagree with him.

Mr Harris is shallow in empathy and understanding of the unfortunate IMO, and that is his biggest failing. It has nothing to do with intelligence... furthermore I don't believe he represents the riding, a set of values, or anything else other than his personal ambition. Harris rode the reform wave and has sat with no serious competition since. With party plant candidates that are token gestures to the special interests in the liberal and ndp (the other parties don't even try to compete for his seat), Mr Harris gets a free ride.

The other parties are happy to give a pass to a MP that shuns any investment in his riding, because that leaves more for them in their ridings is how they see it I figure? From the looks of it we will get the token party plant opposition to Mr Harris 6-weeks before the next election, so we can ridicule a lost cause and call it democracy. The liberals and ndp have no plans to ask the people of the region who they would want for candidates, because they have quota's to fill...