I ran a search in the forums and couldn’t find this anywhere. It is pouring, thundering and raining here, and I could see the lightning striking down as I was driving to work. Which brings me to my questions:
How would a car get struck by lightning? Under what circumstances?
What would happen? Would the car stop dead in its tracks?
What do you do then? How do you get out of the car?
Would your car be damaged or destroyed?
Is there a difference between really new cars (this year), those made about 10 years ago, and 20, and so on?
How? In a thunderstorm.
Once the lightning hits, you can get out - it’s over in an instant. Of course, being in a car is one of the safest places in a thunderstorm.
What would happen? It depends - there have been cases where the tires were popped, but most times very little damage occurs. You might need to get the car painted.
No, there is no difference. (although plastic cars, like the Corvette, offer less protection than metal cars.)
Although the car is sitting on rubber tires, this doesn’t necessarily serve as insulation sufficient to keep lightning from finding a path to ground through the skin of a car. Especially if it’s raining, the water running down the car (especially considering what can get into the water – they coat roads here in the Northeast with SALT all winter, and it takes a while to wash off) can form a conducting path for the lightning. Certainly if the car is the highest thing on a flat plane, it’ll be an inviting target for a lightning strike.
Lightning strikes often go around the skin of the car, the lightning books tell me. A car is a rotten Faraday cage – it’s got those huge gaping holes where the windows are. Radio and phone signals easily go into a car. But the cage doesn’t have to be perfect to protect you from lightning, or at least offer pretty good protection. The operator’s cage at the Theater of Electricity at the Boston Museum of Science has pretty large openings in it, but it’s reasonably effective.
I haven’t heard or read of any cars being destroyed or having portions “spot welded” by lightning. I think you’d probably just opemn the door and step out.
People have raised the issue of fiberglass bodies. These wouldn’t conduct, themselves, and so wouldn’t give you the same protection as a sheet metal body. Although I suspect the bolt would rather pass along the exterior (especially if wet) than through the car.
I’ve never heard that. Lightning usually jumps over a mile in a tiny crossection through air(a very poor conductor). If a can happens to be in the area between the areas of differential,Channeling all that flow through the much more conductive, fairly thick pillars seems an easy thing to to for the last 5 feet or so.
I was driving a car once that I think was hit by lightning. The sound was an incredibly loud “hiss”, not the crackle or bang I’d have expected. The light, though, was blinding, mostly in that it left afterimages of basically my whole field of view, like when you look into a flash bulb. Even though I was driving through a nasty thunderstorm, it was disorienting, sort of a “what just happened?” moment. My perception was of a “sheet” of light covering the windshield in an instant – I certainly couldn’t make out any bolts.
I don’t know that it was my car that was hit, but it was very, very close. I didn’t feel anything that I remember, and I didn’t see any damage on my car later, or those cars around me at the time. The car didn’t stop until I stopped it (I was in slow traffic because of the storm) to let my eyes adjust.
Wow. Another reason why this place is cool. You ask a question, and somebody actually comes out of the woodwork who has had it happen. Were you scared, TW? When you got out, did you notice anything? Paint scarring?
beowulff, when I asked how it would happen, I didn’t mean strictly how - I meant why my car as opposed to all of the others, does it make a difference, it is random, etc. What if you were the only car in a field? What if you were the tallest car? Etc.
All of the above: height + conductivity + distance to next nearest conductive thingy = likelihood of being hit (assuming specific weather conditions are held constant).
Since holding weather conditions constant is obviously unlikely, a big part of it IS random, ie. what’s close to the stepped leader forms?
Lightning is very unpredictable. If you are the tallest car you are probably more likely to be struck, but it’s not guaranteed. Some people think that the tires insulate the car, but really that doesn’t do anything. Air is a good insulator too, and lightning already jumped several miles through the air. A couple of inches of rubber are meaningless under the circumstances.
The body of a car does make a somewhat imperfect Faraday cage, as was already mentioned. I wouldn’t call it “rotten” though. For the most part, the car body offers fairly decent protection. I have seen a couple of pictures of cars that were struck by lightning coming in through the front window. Fortunately, no one was inside of them at the time, but the damage was pretty severe. Most of the damage was to the dash and steering wheel. More often, the lightning hits the car body and you get fairly little damage, at least to the body of the car. Most often you see these little pinholes of damage near the roof and near the bottom of the car.
Older cars tend to fare better in lightning strikes because their electrical systems are much simpler and therefore more rugged. Newer cars can have their engine computers completely fried, which stops the car dead in its tracks. Again, though, lightning is unpredictable. Some cars get struck and their occupants aren’t even sure that they got hit. Other cars die completely and have to get towed. It’s mostly just dumb luck as to which scenario happens.
I’ve never read of car doors being spot welded or anything either. Usually the body damage is fairly minor. Even if the car dies on the spot you can just open the doors and get out once the car stops. I have heard of cars being totaled, but this is usually due to the electrical system being fried. It costs a lot to replace computers and wiring harnesses throughout the car.
Here’s a youtube video of a minivan getting struck:
This picture is pretty typical for the type of damage you see to a car:
One of the advantages of lightning strikes is that they don’t give you a chance to be scared . I didn’t see any damage of any kind on the car, which is why wonder if I actually got hit, or if it was a vehicle next to/in front of me – but I didn’t see any damage on it, either. The car was an early-90’s Saturn, so metal top but plastic sides.
I think when **CalMeacham ** said that cars are rotten Faraday cages, this didn’t mean that it would not conduct electricity, but that it wouldn’t provide perfect protection for the contents of the car. Due to the large openings, some electricity could leak into the interior.
And even if the rubber were a good enough insulator, there’s no reason to assume the path the lightning would take even goes through them. Remember; it’s going to take the path of least resistance, which may very well be the 10 inches of atmosphere between the lowest piece of metal on your car and the ground. We know it can arc across miles of atmosphere; what’s a few more inches?
No, it isn’t. There is no “the path of least resistance.” In conductors, electric current takes all possible paths, with the most current flowing through the paths of lowest resistance. That doesn’t apply to lightning in air, which takes a largely arbitrary path determined by a number of factors including atmospheric conditions and the distribution of charge on the ground and objects on it. The final path that a ground lightning strike actually takes is fixed when the stepped leader (a channel of partially ionized air) from the clouds touches one of hundreds of streamers of charge that are pulled up from the ground and objects on it. One could make an argument for calling that a path of least resistance, but that path doesn’t exist until the instant the strike is triggered.
One could and does. It’s a colloquialism and a useful way to visualize things. Sorry if it’s not strictly true, but if you want to get down to that level of scrutiny, the whole concept of electricity “flowing” is invalid as well.
Something I remember from a trip to the Seattle Science Center when I was a kid. They had an exhibit on lightning and a kid asked about lightning and water. The science guy said it would take a large amount of water, at least a large pond, to transfer the power from a lightning strike. Any thing less, and this would include the rain running off the car, would be vaporized instantly by the heat of the lightning making it incapable of as a conductor of the lightning. A quick check on Google confirms this, the temperature of an average lightning strike is in the 50,000 to 60,000 degree range. This is what causes trees to blow apart when they are struck by lightning, the superheating of the pitch and water in the tree trunk.
I did see the aftermath of a vehicle that was struck by lightning, it was a ramp truck used to haul junk cars. The most damage was to the headache bar (the metal bars between the cab and back of the truck), it blew out a good chunk metal and the truck’s electrical system was fried. The truck had a flat front tire and the wheel was in contact with the ground. While fixing the truck we found a few other odd things. There was very little brake fluid in the system, the wheel bearing grease where the tire was flat was gone and the chrome on the wheel began to flake off. The truck was only about 2 years olds so we knew brake fluid was full and there was plenty of bearing grease before the lightning strike.
This is a little misleading as well. Definitely, the water would be instantly vaporized, however, it’s presence in the first place could be enough to create a preferential path for the bolt to follow. Once the water is vaporized, it’s absence no longer matters, since it’s now the channel of ionized air that’s conducting the lightning, anyway.
This answers a question I had last weekend when I was woke from a sound sleep by lightning hitting something nearby - would a struck car sustain damage? I had the mental image of the console melting, but a suspicion that it’d be unlikely. Of course, I was thinking of a parked car!
Been in a car struck by lightning. Went to a open parking lot on the edge of town as a nice thunderstorm was approaching. Security guard drove by and advised us to leave, we stayed. About 20 minutes later ZAP, huge noise and nothing but light. The next second, utter silence. A second later, back to normal rainfall and thundershowers. Other than that there was nothing besides the my girlfriend clutching my arm tightly, begging me to leave. We left.
No damage to the car. In hindsight, however, I cannot positively state the lightning hit us. Could have struck the pavement beside the car, or a lamppost nearby. In any case, it was damn close and damn cool.
. I didn’t see any damage of any kind on the car, which is why wonder if I actually got hit, or if it was a vehicle next to/in front of me – but I didn’t see any damage on it, either. The car was an early-90’s Saturn, so metal top but plastic sides.