Lightning

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mikeal

Joined
May 24, 2006
Messages
529
A month or two ago I took a three day hike along the Ocean to Lake trail on the east coast of South Florida. I thought dehydration would be my biggest problem. Around 2:00 on the first day, I saw a storm building to the East, but didn't think anything of it. As we started moving closer to each other I was looking around for trees to rig my poncho to for a water catch. As it got even closer and the lightning started, I was avoiding open areas and tall trees. Then all hell broke loose. Now, I'm not normally afraid of lightning, but I was ankle deep in swamp in the middle of nowhere by myself, lightning is striking every 15 - 20 seconds and there was no longer any separation between the 'flash' and 'boom'. Well, I began to get a bit 'concerned'. I know that you are not supposed to be in a field during a lightning storm. I also know that you are not supposed to stand near tall trees. The difference between "field" and "clearing that is not near any tall trees" became very important. It then occurred to me that I was standing in three inches of water anyway, so I spent the next 30 minutes crouched on a log with my hands on my knees. Actually, I crouched for about five and sat drinking water out of my poncho for the next 25. I don't know if you have ever tried to crouch on a log for an extended period of time, but it is very uncomfortable. At one point, I felt my hair stand up on end and figured that was about it for me, but it was only a leaf brushing against my arm.

Some good info here:
http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/outdoors.htm

Also, don't accidentally run your firesteel through the wash.
 
Lightening is one of the only two things in the entire universe that scares me. My wife is the other thing. The two have a lot in common.

We were hiking once a few years back in the mountains north of Rocky Mt. Nat'l Park. We were up above the tree line, with lightly loaded internal frame packs and aluminum hiking poles.

We were really enjoying the sights, but noticed a very fast moving bank of clouds coming in across the valley below us.

We kept an eye on it, and realized it was going to come right over us. There was a great deal of lightening, and as fast as it was moving, we knew there was going to be a lot of wind, too.

We ran down the mountain to get away from the summit. Then we stripped off our packs and put them with our poles under a large boulder. We then ran on down the slope about 300 yards until we found a depression between two large boulders. We dropped down into the depression, put out backs to the rock, and covered ourselves with the rain ponchos we had with us.

The lightening was unreal. Like you said, there was no space between strike and thunder, and the ozone was thick. It passed us by, luckily, but I don't dick around with that stuff.

I grew up in flatland KS. Every farmer with half a brain knows you don't stay in the field when a lightening storm comes your way!

Andy
 
Good to see you here. Lightning is so terrible.
But if my safety is certain, I think few things are more beautiful than lighting.
 
In my link, above, I tell a personal lightning story. While bad, it's not as bad as some others' I've read here, that's for sure.

One story that's unrelated to the "safety" side of it... I was reminded of it just now by Fujita Yuji's comment about the beauty of it.

I was in a plane...probably around Summer of 2000...flying from Washington DC to Chicago late at night. Storms were freakishly bad all over the Eastern half of the US, and my 4:00pm flight finally departed around 9:30pm. Honestly, I'm not even sure how we caught a gap in the thunderstorms long enough to take off but we did.

I was treated to a lightning show like nothing I'd ever seen on earth.

Looking down into the tops of the clouds at 40,000 ft was amazing: just to see the cloud tops light up like yellow-pink-orange mushroom clouds.

Here's a daytime picture I found that's close to what I saw.

20021110_lightning.jpg


At one point--I figure it might have been over Ohio--I looked straight down into this swirling mass of fire. A prolonged lightning discharge went from cloud to cloud to cloud, and lit up this slowly rotating whirlpool of clouds like a fiery mass of hell.

There's no picture out there anything like that mess.

Beautiful? Yeah, maybe, but it scared the piss out of me looking into that yawning chasm of fire. In about two seconds, it was over and pitch black took over, punctuated by a few distant blossoms of lightning here and there.

That said, it was an amazingly smooth flight! Barely any turbulence, despite the chaotically unstable air masses below us.
 
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