Under what circumstances, if any, can thunder by itself cause damage?

Question

We had an extremely impressive thunderstorm last night, unprecedented for the fairly moderate Northern Virginia weather, and impressive probably in most places. I was glad not to be in a tent.

I was surprised by how many commenters on NextDoor found the thunder frightening. They specified the noise of the thunder as frightening, not the lightning, severe winds, torrential rain or modest hail, which most didn't even mention.

My first reaction was to dismiss them as silly. But then I wondered if thunder is known to have caused damage (from pressure differential) and, if so, under what circumstances. Exclude damage caused by people who are momentarily startled by a sudden clap of thunder and lose control of machinery or who slip and fall.

Answer 1

Yes, and it apparently happened (article in German)

The paper reports from an incident in 2017 where a severe thunder blast destroyed windows. It has several images on what that looked like.

Bringing it together

The theories are not 100% confirmed, but the mostly accepted theory given in the Wikipedia article is that thunder is created by the massive and sudden increase of the temperature of the air surrounding the lightning (up to 30.000° C), which causes the air to expand its volume by a factor of 10 to 100. This then creates a shockwave and finally a blast. This effect is therefore comparable to a physical explosion, for instance caused by an exploding steam engine.

That such physical explosions can and have killed people is undoubted. My answer above has an instance of such an explosion causing (although minor) damage, but the other answers clearly state that it's very likely that standing to close to the source of a thunder may cause permanent hearing problems or even worse.

If somebody stood to close to the lightning, I'm assuming that would not be reported as "died of thunder", but more commonly as "died of lightning", even if the actual cause was not electrocution, but the effect of the shockwave. Whether the victim was also deaf afterwards, doesn't change anything, anyway.

Answer 2

I can't address whether it's actually happened but it could:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder

In close proximity to the source, the sound pressure level of thunder is usually 165–180dB, but can exceed 200 dB in some cases.

That's way above the threshold to cause permanent hearing loss.

Answer 3

Not in this period of the year. But from Spring to Early summer, in the areas where there is still some snow a well placed thunder might trigger an avalanche.

Usually the warm water just takes away the upper layer of the snow cover, but if there are points where it can seep to the ground and weaken the hold from beneath, a thunder triggering an avalanche might be even more likely.