system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How can a lightning bolt have a "rolling" thunder clap that lasts upwards of ten seconds?
gpt
Imagine a bolt of lightning a mile long.  The lightning has heated up a huge cylinder of air a mile long to millions of degrees, and this air expands suddenly and then collapses back on itself, and this is what creates the thunder.

So imagine the lightning bolt a mile away, perpendicular to you.  You see it almost immediately but the sound reaches you a few seconds later in a huge boom / crash because the entire wave of sound rushing towards you hits you all at once (well not quite - imagine the lightning in a big semicircle around you and it will be 100% simultaneous).

Now imagine a bolt of lightning that starts one mile from you but runs a mile straight away from you, 2 miles away.  It's the same lightning bolt, makes the same amount of energy, but you will first start hearing the lightning 5 seconds after it strikes and it will keep rumbling for 5 seconds.  Somebody else who is miles away to the right or left might hear a huge crash instead if they happen to be perpendicular to the bolt.