What does Great Big Sea, Bambi and Speed Racer all have in common? They were all here at Rondeau this past week.
Great Big Sea was here in spirit, if not in the flesh. Our first musical fishing program was done last Thursday. With the help of a visiting naturalist from Bronte Creek Provincial Park took we took our visitors on a music al journey through the bygone days of the fishing industry of Rondeau. The night was a brought to life with fish tales and sea shanties and everyone was singing traditional fishing songs that were made famous by the Newfoundland band known as Great Big Sea.
Bate's Fisheries from Rondeau Park
Bambi made her appearance at Friday evening’s Deer Hike deer walk and she wasn’t alone. A bald eagle and a raccoon were quite the delight for the large crowd who came out to see and learn about Rondeau’s largest animal.
The true highlight of the week was on Saturday. Not only was it a great day it was also National Parks Day. Rondeau was filled with campers and they would have given Speed Racer a run for his money during our 3rd annual Amazing Race. Teams raced around the park completing challenges such as; identifying bird calls, building nests, matching animal scat, and outsmarting a spider! Great fun and excitement were had by all (although there were many tired campers at the finish line.) Our first place team, an uncle/nephew duo completed all the challenges in just under three hours! Prizes were generously donated by the Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit, the Park Store and the Friends of Rondeau.
Nature likes everything to be in balance. This includes electrical charges and that’s were lighting come in. Lightning is just nature’s way to keep those charges balanced out. During a storm, rain, snow and ice collide continuously in the clouds which can cause a build up of a negative charge at the bottom of the cloud. At the same time objects on the ground like steeples, trees, and people swinging golf clubs, build up a positive charge. Nature wants to balance this out and we end up with a lightning strike. A lightning strike is created by a process called a ‘stepped leader’. Negative charges jump downwards from the clouds in steps of about 46m (150 feet). When these ‘steps’ comes within 46m of a positively charged object on the ground a surge of positive charge, called a streamer, rushes up to meet the negative charge and creates a channel for electricity to pass creating lightning. Although the strike looks like a single bolt, it is usually made up of several bolts under 2 inches in diameter and they all strike in less than half a second.
Lightning is more common than most people think. At any given time there are more than 1000 storms raging on earth. On average lightning strikes the Earth about 100 times per second! Thankfully they aren’t all in Rondeau. The temperature of the air around lightning bolt is a balmy 30,000 °C (54,000 °F) which is around 5 times the surface of the sun. So it should come as no surprise that a large thunderstorm produces more energy than atomic bomb. The super-heated air around a lightning bolt is expands faster than the speed of sound. This causes a shockwave that we hear as thunder. The reason we usually hear rolling thunder instead of one big bang is because lightning isn’t one single bolt but several, all creating shockwaves at different altitudes which reach our ears at slightly different times.
Before I say au revoir for the week I’d like to thank Laura and Lauren who helped write this weeks Rondeau Events. Our events for the upcoming week are attached. I highly recommend coming out on Tuesday night for an evening of Lake Erie’s shipwrecks and lost souls. If you have any questions about our programs or nature in general please drop by the Visitor Centre, call us at 519-674-1768 or send me an email at kipling.campbell@ontario.ca
Strikingly Yours
Kip
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