“Lightning is known to travel up to 30 miles away from a storm,” meteorologist Cyrena Arnold tells Popular Science. Cloud to ground lightning can happen day or night and is a fairly common type of lightning. They typically come out of the back of a thunderstorm cloud, instead of the front like most lightning bolts. Thunder and lightning strikes heat up the air, creating large ripples of sound that spread out. To follow the standard 30/30 rule for lightning, count the amount of time that passes between seeing lightning and hearing thunder.