It occurred to me not so long ago, during spate of “thunder and lighting” in the North East of England, why is it referred to as thunder and lighting, when we see the lightning first, then hear the thunder?Even alphabetically, if one were to peruse the English dictionary for a light bit of reading, the word lightning would be found before thunder.

Now I hear those who might say, “but it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, both the thunder and lightning are generated in the same instance. Its just mans proximity to the event and difference in light speed and sound speed which give rise to this separating phenomenon of visual and audio effects.”

Well I’m not having it. Allow me to lay on a scenario. I’m with my 2 year old son, and we are observing a storm from the confines of the house. Front door open for surround sound. The son is about to experience something relatively unknown, and as a father, a feeling of responsibility overwhelms me to educate this kid about whats to come. The dark grey clouds smother the sky blue, rain drops slowly but surely start to make themselves present. Having already heard the first clap of thunder a few minutes before, I’m set for what’s to come. And there it is, blink and you miss it, a flash that makes you think you’ve been neurolysed by the men in black.

“there’s the lighting” I say to my son, accompanied by a jazz hands like hand gesture.

The adrenaline builds over the next 10 seconds or so before BANG!

“and there’s the thunder!”

Before awkwardly reaffirming what we’ve just seen, “Thunder…and…lighting”

Just wrong isn’t it.

Before I close the case on this, I understand that “Lightning and thunder” doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue as well, but is that because we are so used to the original saying. Interestingly, Happy-Place-3413 on reddit claims the Germans use the phrase “Blitz und Donner” which translates to lightning and thunder. So maybe one day I’ll follow this blog up with a deep dive into the etymology of the phrase and maybe start a movement to correct it. One step at a time, lets start with acknowledging it.

He said.