I went with my husband, his sister and his parents on a fishing tournament today (I’m not a fisherperson, but it’s good family time). It was overcast and sprinkling a bit.
The first thing I noticed and pointed out was that there was a buzzing, and it seemed to be coming from one of the unused fishing rods standing up beside me. It seemed to be getting louder, and sort of sounded like what a small release of air through a water bubble or something would sound like. I thought it was something like that until my MIL’s rod started making the same noise. Then I looked at her hair and it was starting to stand on end. I started getting a bit freaked out and the FIL laid down the two unused rods that had been standing up, and everyone sort of got lower to the floor of the boat. My husband stood up to move something and he felt the static in the air. Then everyone looked and pointed at me - I have long hair and it was standing right up on end.
We got the hell out of there. No lightning strikes at that spot, but we could hear thunder. Scary.
When I worked at Lockheed I had a bit of a walk to my car. One afternoon it was raining pretty well and I had an umbrella. There was lightning in the area, and I felt electricity in the shaft. I folded it up and got wet on my – quickened – walk to my portable Faraday cage.
I assume you weren’t in Calgary today, since it didn’t rain here? And, holy shit! That would freak me the hell out, too. My husband coaches baseball in a league that actually lost a kid to a lightning strike a few years ago - it really does happen.
It sure did me… (although it wasn’t on a boat in a lake which would have been worse). I was at a very large soccer complex watching my daughter’s team warm up when my wife nudged me and gave me that head motion that means “look over there but don’t make it obvious.” I saw the hugest “frizz job” hairdo I’ve ever seen. I started to laugh but then I noticed that the woman next to her with long straight hair also had it all standing on end. I told my wife “this isn’t good” and about a second later the early warning lightning horns blew. We quickly moved to the mini van and spent the next 3 hours watching an incredible storm blow though along with a fun lightning show. 8pm game finally started at 11.
A buddy of mine was running up the hill to a car in Arizona trying to escape an incoming thunderstorm. Just as he got to the car, he suddenly felt his hair standing on end and heard crackling sounds–instinctively, he dove to the ground. He saw little coronas all over the place being emitted from the ground. An instant later–a simultaneous FLASH/BOOM! He survived without a scratch (or a “buzz”?), but friends inside the car thought he’d been hit and killed right in front of them.
