Lightning is one of the most fascinating aspects of meteorology and the atmosphere in general. It’s also a subject of intense interest and we have much to still learn!

It is Lightning Safety Awareness Week and so I thought we’d take a minute to talk about this amazing-but dangerous-phenomena.

HOW DOES LIGHTNING FORM?

Lightning is the result of stuff running into each other within clouds. Just like rubbing your shoes on the carpet can produce a charge, especially when it’s a dry winter day, static electricity happens in clouds as ice and hail collide.

As shown above, a lot of lightning stays “in the cloud”. Cloud-to-ground lightning is the next most common type of lightning. A special type of cloud-to-ground lightning, containing a positive voltage, is rarer but quite a bit more dangerous because it carries a higher voltage, can travel farther distances and can sometimes be a “bolt from the blue”….striking the ground in a location FAR away from the thunderstorm.

WHEN THUNDER ROARS, HEAD INDOORS

When we talk about staying safe in a thunderstorm, this is a phrase we use a lot. Why? Because if you are close enough to hear the thunder, you are close enough to be struck by lightning. The actual storm may be several miles away, but as I said, lightning sometimes will leap out of an anvil cloud and strike the ground several miles away.

You can estimate how far away a storm is by doing some math. Sound travels at 767mph on average although the density (and therefore temperature) of the air can slow down or speed up the sound of the thunder. Warmer air is less dense and so the sound can cut through the air faster.

A good rule of thumb is that the lag time between seeing lightning and hearing the thunder is 5 seconds for every mile. Again it can vary slightly depending on the temperature of the air.

“HEAT” LIGHTNING: NOPE

“Heat lightning” is one of those weather myths that I get a kick out of debunking because people are often very surprised that IT IS NOT A REAL THING. Some will even argue with me (not as much as when I rant about tornado sirens, but that’s a different story").

What is “heat lightning”? No it isn’t lightning that just magically occurs because it’s hot. It’s simply lightning from a distant storm. So distant that you can’t hear the thunder that the lightning produces. Light travels MUCH farther than sound! It’s not uncommon to be able to see lightning from a storm that’s 50-100 miles away if conditions are right.

Because of the curvature of the earth, often we can only see the top of distant storms. So we are seeing the lightning illuminating the top of that storm.

WHO GETS STRUCK BYLIGHTNING?

Thankfully, the odds of being struck by lightning are low; about 1 in 15,000 during your lifetime. BUT it does happen and it can be prevented. The majority of lightning victims are struck while doing something involving WATER. Boating, fishing, swimming, at the beach, etc.

No surprise, 80% of victims are men. Why? Well a lot of these activities are dude-centric. Also: men are generally more, shall we say, stubborn about cutting an activity short as a result of threatening weather.

According to the company Vasalia, Ohio and Pennsylvania are in the middle of the pack when it comes to lightning deaths per capita.