Can lightning and thundering really cause temperature like 30000 C?

TQ

The bright light of the lightning flash represents a great deal of energy. This energy heats the air in a narrow channel to five times the temperature of the sun's surface (30K°C; 50K°F) in a few millionths of a second! The air ... having been heated to such a high temperature ...has no time to expand ... so it's at a very high pressure. The high pressure air expands outward into the surrounding air compressing it and causing a 'disturbance' that propagates in all directions away from the lightning stroke. The 'disturbance' is a shock wave for the first 10 yards ... after which it becomes an ordinary sound wave we hear as thunder. Thunder can seem like it goes on and on because each point along the channel produces a shock wave and sound wave. Thunder is the sound of exploding air along the entire length of the lightning channel.

billrussell42

lightning can. Thunder is just the sound of lightning, and has no temperature above that of the air. wikipedia: The core temperature of the plasma during the return stroke may exceed 50,000 K, causing it to brilliantly radiate with a blue-white color.

rick29148

right around the lightning bolt, yep ..................................

busterwasmycat

The energy in a lightening bolt can cause some extreme temperatures, yes. The thunder part is a consequence of that energy release, not the cause. Temperature increase is just what happens to matter when you add energy, and the voltage of a lightening bolt is very high and leads to the release of an extremely large amount of energy. A lot of that energy comes out as light and sound, but there is also heat.