Thunderstorms and mistaken parents

[Lumens]

100% humidity means you're under water, right?

 

[Biskit]

Heavy-gun fire can be heard over prodigious distances if conditions are right, so I'd also expect thunder to be heard over more than a couple of miles, but perhaps the very fact there's a storm means that conditions aren't right for sound carrying? Low clouds and heavy rain might act as noise mufflers perhaps? Though I thought I'd read somewhere that clouds can act as boards that sound can bounce off so that noise can be heard even further away.

The suspended or falling water droplets (or even ice crystals in clouds) will both absorb and reflect the sound. I would certainly expect to get muffling effects through rain that would limit the range of the sound from the lightning. You might also find local rain noise masking the sound from more distant lightning.

 

[Kylara]

My quick googling and using engineer brain in my partner has revealed that the it takes 4.7 seconds for sound to travel a mile.

That is all. I have no further input for pressure or temperature or anything else and in fact I thought this was about people mistaking parents during thunderstorms...

 

[The Judge]

The cutting ends off ham and defrosting chickens reminds me of the story Chromium, in Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, where he relates exactly the same blind following of a formula in various paint/varnish factories during and after WWII. In one anecdote he tells how a prescription book called for two slices of onion to be introduced into linseed oil as it was boiling, which he thought odd to say the least. It turned out that before thermometers had come into use the temperature of the oil had to be assessed by other means, one of which was to immerse a slice of onion into the oil and if it fried, the boiling was finished. "Evidently, with the passing of the years, what had been a crude measuring operation had lost its significance and was transformed into a mysterious and magical practice."!

 

[Biskit]

I had something similar from an early boss who was talking about a successful grease formulation that was going from small, hand-crafted batches to bulk production. They re-created it in the larger scale but it never came out right. Finally, they got the old guy who did the hand mixing to take them through the whole process. At some point the guy spat in the mix for luck - the little bit of moisture was the necessary extra ingredient.