As I write, we are in the middle of a thunderstorm on the outskirts of Torrevieja. The dogs are terrified, but I’m not switching everything off because my brand new surge protector should save us.

My question is, I’m using the old-fashioned English way of calculating the centre of the storm – count the seconds between the lightning and the start of the thunder, each second representing a mile.

It places the middle of the storm in Orihuela city at the moment, moving south and away.

Is my method in any way accurate, or should I take my lead from the shivering dogs?

try this....

http://www.blitzortung.org/DF/Webpag...&map=0&lang=en

lightening strike site!!

with google map plug in for locations!!!

I was told that when i was a kid , lightning then thunder was a mile . I hated it till i move to spain all by myself 9yrs ago . And i had to get used to it. Where we have our house we see gib and watch it coming up the coast. And its pretty wild over the sea. Hope your dogs are ok.

According to my unorthodox calculations, if the storm doesn’t fizzle out over Murcia and Almeria, it should reach the CDS around 6am tomorrow morning, and if there’s any justice in this world the house of the mayor of Alhaurin el Grande and his gyppo pals will be flattened before they wake up.

Sorry, I didn’t see your reply before my angry post about AeG. The dogs have stopped shaking and the lightning, thunder and rain have stopped although there is still a strong wind.

I’m envious of your position, if I ever win the lottery I will be down at Sotogrande too.

I can’t do smilies, I’m too thick, please imagine one here.

Im 100ks from gib, hard to see it tonight im in scotland.

Wildcat, this is my second apology within minutes. I didn’t read where you live.

I lived there once too, near what was then the International supermarket, just off the dual carriageway.

I used to walk my dogs then, two different dogs, by the tennis courts at a posh urbanisation called something like Sierra Zarazuela. I lived on the other side of the road, I think the urbanisation was called Olimar, it was a gated one because of all the Gyppos, sorry about that.

I’m not going to apologise again, can you see the Firth of Forth and the Ochills? I used to be able to.

Have you ever been to Copland Road?

There's your problem. From school physics we know that the speed of sound is 330 m/s. So the time between seeing the flash and hearing the thunder in seconds is the number of 330 metres away that the flash was.
A good way to count seconds reasonably accurately is to say "one thousand" between each count. That takes just about a secons to do.
So FLASH 1 - "one thousand" ... 2 - "one thousand" ... 3 "one thousand" BOOM tells you that particular spark was 3 * 330 = 1km away.

Do you know the area well. Yes i see the ochills , im a mile from the forth.
Where is copland rd?.