...get your tail to shelter before you get fried.

These photos were taken back in '75. Shortly after this, the kid on the left was badly burned and the guy with the camera was dead.
Here's the story: FRIED BY LIGHTNING

Been there trying to keep my boat from blowing away during a thunderstorm on the Nevada side of Lake Mojave.
Noticed sparks jumping from my fingers to the bow rail and
hit the ground and rolled to a low spot just a second or two before lighting struck a small rise a few yards away.

Wow.

Happened to me and buddy on the divide in Colorado many years ago. We got away from our aluminum pack frames and laid down on the tundra an prayed a bit.

Perry

Was at a soccer game on a 800 acre turf farm that was as flat as a pancake and this started happening. I grabbed my wife and started calling for my son who was on the field to come to me. The coaches were starting to give me a WTF do you think you are doing, we are palying a game attitude when a bolt of lightning hit somewhere off in the distance, It was like the beach scene from Jaws, people runnung everywhere with some women panicking beyond belief.

In Idaho, many years ago, we thought it was funny to listen to the static electricity crackle in our gun barrels, out hunting jackrabbits. Not a lick of sense...

In 1957, lightning struck the radio antenna behind me, and the induction field (I'm not sure that that's the right term) drew every muscle in my body taut for an instant. 'Twasn't fun. Was very soon very glad that it was over with.

Glad you survived Ken, that sounds like a close call.


I suspect soiling one's Drawers is the outcome of the opposite of making one's muscles Taut, which was the effect ( almost) when Lightening hit a tree 50 or so yards from me while Skinning my son's first buck. I still have a chunk of bark blown off from the strike.


I about had my nose in the deers chest cavity and when I heard the sound, my first though was "shotgun blast" from a fellow hunter who was P-O'd when the rest of the crew agree'd that my son drew first blood, his shot was after the deer had stopped forward motion. The old codger was about to steal a 15 year old's deer by placing the coup-de-gras in the neck, until others mentioned my son's heart shot was the end of the deer's life even though he ran in front of this old guy before piling up. I honestly think he knew it may be his last chance to kill a deer while healthy enough to do so, and may not have known my son was the one who poked the hole in him first.


That was the closest I have come to the effects of lightnening, but once in the backwoods of Wyoming's bitterroot range I enjoyed a lightnening show that went on for 20+ minutes. Very amazing how the forest sounds when the band plays.

Allen

A story here in Oregon of two yound climbers on Three Fingered Jack. Rather than be happy with signing the mt top register one of the party was busy engraving his name and date into the aluminum containment system. The first bolt knocked them about, and guy two hustled down slope. A warning shot from God. Guy one insisted on continuing his engrazing and paid the ultimate price. Lightening can strike twice.

when I first started reading this thread I saw a flash and huge bang, Had to hit my building or the one next door.

An old pilot friend who kept a float plane in a lake behind his house in New Jersey was hit in the head by lighting - while sitting in the same chair on his dock - THREE TIMES. Nobody, including physicists from Princeton, can figure out how he lived through the first strike. After the first strike he moved the chair about fifty feet closer to shore, after the 2nd strike he figured tghat it was mathmatically impossible to get hit again, but moved the chair into the backyard at the very end of the dock.

He died at the age of 91, but was never again struck by lightning.


Terry

+1

On two occasions I have run hard for low ground off of a peak. One time was with my 15 year old son way above timberline. We sprinted 100 yards steeply down and cowered in a rock ravine under a gap roof formed by a huge slab of rock above us as a lightning storm passed over us. We put foam backpack pads under us and sat on them.

Feel bad for the kids in the photo. Amazing that they had no idea what that much static electricity meant.

As friends were bringing me home from the nursing home in Payson, they stopped to render aid and to direct traffic (cops and ambulance hadn't gotten there yet) where lightning had struck one biker and had knocked another unconscious.

The biker who'd been struck survived just long enough to die in the hospital in Show Low.

Lightning comprises two flashes � the big one downward from the sky and a little "greeter" from the ground upward. Apparently, when the group of bikers stopped by the side of the highway to wait for the thunder storm to pass, that one biker had the great misfortune to stand right where the ground "greeter" flash would pass up through his body and out the top of his head.

I wonder how many people have been killed by that old adage "lightning never strikes twice in the same place" because its entirely false. In fact, lightning often does strike in the same place. It strikes where there's the least resistance. If a particular rock pile has low electrical resistance, it'll be a lightning magnet.

A friend and I were fishing one afternoon on the St. Johns River and had a strange experience with an approaching thunderstorm approaching; we kept fishing like idiots. I made a cast, plug hit the water, but the monofilament line kind of levitated above the water like it was floating in the air and the boron rod I was fishing with was buzzing. Lightning never stuck, but there sure was a lot of static electricity in air. Wasn't long and we got the hell out of there. Never had anything like that happen since.

It's not entirely true that lightning always strikes the highest point. It's not uncommon for it to strike the ground not very far from an obviously higher point, such as a tree, because it's "looking for" the path of lowest electrical resistance, not the shortest physical distance.

I had lightning hit a fence post maybe 30 feet away from me when I was a teen.

It was really a weird feeling just before it happened.

I was haltering a nervous horse at the time.

Lightning hit a locus tree in my front yard twice. I saw the step leader hit the upward streamer the first time. Impressive. Killed the tree. About two weeks later I got home after a violent T-storm had passed and it was gone. Exploded into thousands of pieces.

Two years ago while hunting near Stanley, ID I ran across this result of a really lively day. The storm must have been in the early summer because none of the fires had spread more than 5 yards or so and most of the trees hadn't burned completely. There must have been well over 100 strikes inside of a few hundred yards of ridge top. It would have been hell on earth to have been there in person. Every brown tree you can see here was a strike and the ground was covered by burned sagebrush.

Re static electricity in the air �

When Carol Anne and I went up to our lookout tower early in 1960, the copper bus wire from its peak to the ground was dark brown. By midsummer, it was bright copper, like a just-minted penny. Lightning hadn't struck it, but it had quietly drained a lot of static electricity out of the air.

Well... not quite.

After a lightning strike, the place isn't the same anymore.

When we lived in Nevada, we'd turn off all the lights and sit in the living room and watch thunderstorms sweep across the Carson Valley. It was quite a show.

After several months watching thunder storms march great distances, my buddy Mick developed a real feel for the cadence of their progress.

Sitting beside a class mate in the university library, he watched a distant thunder storm march ever closer, directly toward where they sat.

"The next one's gonna get us," he said when lightning struck not far off.

The words were barely off his lips when lightning struck a tree not far beyond the window.

The other guy quickly scarfed-up his books, skittered nervously away, and never let himself get close to Mick again.

With a grin, Mick refers to the episode as "when I called lightning down onto the head of" that guy.

One of my favorite lightning storms was on the 4th of July when I was growing up. I'm pretty sure that the fireworks were helping to set off some of the lightning strikes.
The storm was definitely much more impressive than the fireworks.

Let us not forget the peril posed by talking on a cell or cordless phone during a storm.

one time driving in a bad storm at night lightening hit the car just ahead of me and the induction field tightened every muscle in my azz, Ken.

Years ago the ex-wife and I were camping at Ocean Pond in the Osceola National Forest near Olustee, FL when a Thunder & Lightning storm came through. I got the Ex and both of our kids into the car as there was lightning was hitting pine trees all around us. I was told that would be the safest place to be in a lightning storm.

Two years ago I was sitting in my pickup while Elk Hunting in SW Washington when a lightning storm came through. All of a sudden there was a lightning strike real close to my location and all of a sudden the woods on the east side of the logging road I was sitting on came alive and I literally had a herd of Elk try to get into my pickup with me, they were that spooked from the strike.

I would probably do the same and wonder why the professional advice is to squat down and stay on your two feet ?

This clip is amazing.

I may have done the wrong thing but my only thought was to get the hell away from that boat

Didn't have much time for either (a) a lotta research or (b) studied decision-making, didja? That sho' ain't hard to understand!

The idea is to NOT be the tallest thing around. You want to be the shortest. At the same time, most shoe soles have a lot of insulating rubber in them. They're a lot less apt to conduct a current from the ground than your butt. None of this stuff is a guaranteed cure. It's all playing the odds.

I see a lot of you fellas have met my Ex.

thanks much--a very good, interesting, and informative post...

in about almost 100 various summit adventures total (60+ peaks), this was the thing i always had in the back of my mind--the notion of which i always feared.

in one trip where a storm swooped in within minutes, we were trapped on an open 10,000 foot high ridge, with 5/8 inch hailstones, lightning, and essentially no where to go--total, horrifying fear...

Lightning struck our Combine when we were harvesting wheat at the Ranch about 25 years ago. Big storm rolled in as we we're finishing up a 300 acre field. Damn Combine broke down, like they always do during the wheat harvest. Dad & my little brother & I were standing up on top of the Combine.
Little brother & I hopped off about 5 seconds before the Lightning strike. Dad wasn't fast enough & the Lighning knocked him off & out cold for about 5 minutes.
Mom was sitting in the truck hollering for us to get off the combine! She said Dad lit up like a light bulb just like in the cartoons! I was looking at the ground & felt the strike, but didn't get shocked. Sure was near deaf for a few days afterward.
That was too damned close for me!

One Set of my Great Grandparents were big cotton farmers during the depression up near Lubbock, TX at a little town called Levelland. It's flatter than a pancake up there & you can see for miles.
Anyhow, they were out in the field hoeing cotton when a big storm blew in, & both took a direct lighting strike in the middle of the field. Knocked them both out cold for about an hour. Fried my Great Grandfather's watch, so he new how long they were out. Both woke up rain soaked & finally ran back to the house with no effects from the Lightning, but it welded the two hoes together that he was carrying.
Great Grandmother lived to be 98, and I was about eight years old when she died of old age. I remember any time another storm rolled in on the Plains, you sure as heck couldn't beat her to the Storm Cellar on the farm. Pretty dangled fast for a 90 something year old lady

My scariest episode was while bowhunting over Labor Day near Sun Valley, ID one time. We had one of those early snowstorms and I was on a ridge in about 4" of it. It was snowing and blowing and then the thunder started booming. I couldn't see any lightning through the snow so I had no idea how close it was. I just knew it had to be close the way the trees were shaking. I descended rapidly.

Is that the same Three Finger Jack, which is near Owyhee Reservoir. My name is on that register from about 1985, except then it was stored in a simple quart mason jar with a screw top.

About forty years ago, my younger brother and I were doing farm chores out in one of the fields. I looked up and his hair was standing up just like the OP photos. I said "Oh Crap". He looked up at me and he said "OH Crap". We both dropped our irrigating shovels, leaned forward at the waist to lower our elevation and RAN until our hair no longer stood on end. We never saw lightning strike that day, but that is as close as I ever need to come.

I was driving on a road near home when a lightning bolt came across the hood of the car and hit a transformer on a pole about 50 yards from me. Hair stood up on my arm, and the force of the blast moved my car over about 3 feet on the road. Had I been hugging the outside line, I'd have ended up in the ditch.

Another member mentioned the fishing line dropping slowly due to the static. Experienced that once too. Made a run for the resort and just got the boat tied up when the storm hit. Luckily, didn't get hit with the lightning.

The picture sent cold chills up my spine! I was struck by lightning under similar circumstances while hiking the Appalachian trail in GA. Me and two buds were inside our tent during a torrential rainstorm and our hair rose like that. A millisecond later lightning zapped me through the tent, lifted me a foot off the ground and threw me back down. Our nylon tent was fried to virtually nothing in an instant and I was writhing on the ground, legs numb, difficulty breathing, scared.

We quickly gathered our belongings and hauled ass to a ravine and pitched a spare tent for the night. In the meantime all our gear was soaked, including our sleeping bags. Made for an interesting night trying to sleep!

To this day, I can't even take static electricity without almost wetting my pants...really.

In 1985, lightning hit the pickup "The Warden" and I were driving. That 84 Ford cost about $10,600 new - the lightning did $1500 damage to the truck, and demolished the mobile phone contained therein. It blew the phone antenna off the truck, left a small deposit of melted metal where the antenna was, and a scorch mark about 2" across.
Year before last, lightning hit so close to my house & office - it knocked pictures off the walls, totaled 3 computers, my security gate, 2 TV's, and I don't remember what all.
NOT stuff to mess with, by any means. Try to stay safe!

Mark

Thunder's just a noise, boys.

Lightning does the work.

(older country song)