On the way to work this morning, one of the local radio guys mentioned that his brother had been struck by lightning twice. I’m always amazed by these multiple strike stories. It seems so Old Testament. Besides, I don’t know anyone who’s even been struck once.
So how about it? Anyone here been struck by lightning? Known anyone who has? What were the circumstances, and if it was you, what do you remember?
Me? No…
But I did meet a guy who my father knew who had been hit something like 7 (?) times… or so my father said that he (the guy) claimed…
IE: I was told that he had been hit several times, but I was a kid at the time, and they might have been funnin’ me.
Oddly, I kinda would like to have this experience so that I can tell people about it later… weird, eh?
I haven’t, but an Apple Valley (CA) boy was killed yesterday after he was struck by lightning.
Astroboy, your dad’s friend that ranger guy who got hit so many times he was on TV? Dooms Sullivan, I think? Think he eventually got toasted.
Knew a guy who had been caddying, the golfer wanted to continue. Caddy left, 2 holes later, golfer killed.
Lee Trevino has been hit twice. Asked what he learned after the first strike, he said “I’m gonna hold a 1-iron over my head. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.” (a tough club to use well)
Asked what he learned after the second strike, he said “When God wants to play through, you let Him.”
Back when I was working on my master’s degree in forest ecology, I was assisting a colleague with some vegetation and soil sampling in the mountains of North Carolina near the town of Highlands. As it rained there almost every day, and as I sweated so much in my rain gear that I might just as well have not been wearing any, I quit even bringing my stuff. My friend’s husband worked for an outfitter, so she had several sets of new GoreTex gear.
We misjudged the approach of a thunderstorm and were caught out in a stand of old white pines that must have been nearly 100’ tall. We had enough time to find a spot that wasn’t too close to any of the tallest trees and got down on the ground. At the time, I didn’t know that you should crouch down in a cannonball shape with only the balls of your feet on the ground, so I was lying flat on my back. Without rain gear, I was rather wet.
We soon got into the phase of the storm where we could hear the lightning sizzling as it flashed and the thunder would boom immediately after. It was then that I started to feel moderately strong electric shocks from the ground as the lightning got ready to strike. I asked my dry and well-insulated friend if she could feel them. “No! Feel what!?” After what seemed like an eternity, the storm passed without either of us getting hit. We made REALLY good time back to the truck and called it quits for that day. For the longest time I’d head straight for the truck whenever I heard thunder - - no matter how far away it was.
Ya know Astroboy14, I’d be a little skeptical of that story too.
IvoryBill - Yikes! That sounds like you were feeling the charges building up in the ground. Scary.
Two weeks ago my wife’s brother was sitting at the desk in his bedroom when a bolt apparently struck outside his house, travelled along the pooled rainwater on the ground to the foundation, came up through the floor, through his feet and out the palm of his hand into his desklamp. He was numb/tingly for a few days. His doctor ran an MRI which showed no damage, but he’s got a small dark spot on his palm where the jolt exited.
He used to love watching storms but now he’s taken to hiding under the bed, and he says he can feel when one’s coming.
A friend of mine was. He said the only thing that it affected was that he can’t wear watches. Battery operated watches start missing time and then die in a matter of days when he wears them. He bought a kinetic one, but I don’t know how that’s working out.
A friend of mine got hit when he was a kid. He wasn’t hit directly, but he was in that zone near the bolt where there’s still a lot of electricity moving through the air into the ground. I think he was 10-20 feet away from the bolt’s point of impact. It didn’t seem to have any lasting effects, though.
Okay, okay. The freak steps out of the crowd. Heck, where do you think I got the username?
Yep. Twice. First time was while mountain climbing in Colorado, when I was 18. Turned out that storm I was watching was a bit closer than I thought it was. I wasn’t hurt, but a friend who was using a power drill about a hundred feet away got pretty badly burned.
The second time was just a few years ago, while kayaking. Hey, there wasn’t SUPPOSED to be a storm that day… Anyway, I got hit as I was pulling out to take shelter- the stroke burned a hole in the bottom of my inflatable kayak, and I ended up having to walk out during the storm.
Both times hurt- much like getting a nasty shock from an outlet while somebody hit me over the head with a two-by-four.
And, for the record, no damn superpowers. The first time I went around for a week trying to throw lightning bolts.
Radioactive spider, my ass.
When I was 12, we were at a small cottage community that is perched on a (very) small lake. They get good thunderstorms rolling in very often off Lake Erie. One evening 6 of us were watching the storm from the shelter of a covered dock (20’x30’ with a bench/railing around the outside and a proper peaked roof). The light show was fantastic, until one hit at the same time as the thunder sounded. All 6 of us found ouselves picking ourselves up off the floor of the dock, including the person in a wooden lounge chair. The best we can figure is that it struck the water. I don’t recall any effect on us other than a surge of adrenaline. I suppose you could call it electrifying. :rolleyes: (sorry)
A couple of years ago (some 15 years later and not scared by the previous experience) my girlfriend and I went to the roof of our 32 story apartment building to see an approaching storm. There was no rain and the temperature was very comfortable. We stayed and enjoyed the show until we noticed our hair was standing on end from the electricity in the air. We decided that we should probably leave, and did.
Actually, the man you are thinking of was a US Park Service Ranger named Ray Sullivan, who was struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1976. He survived all of the lightning strikes, only to commit suicide after breaking up with his wife or girlfriend. I can’t find his obituary on the Internet, so I don’t know what year he died.
I’m with you, been hit twice, once in a hay field in 1959 and once on a sail boat in Savanna Bay in 1978.
Yep, can hear it, feel it and I get kinda tense when my hair starts to stand up.
When metal starts to ‘crinkle’ I get the hell away and go ‘tinkle’ a bunch- quicly- you might say almost uncontrollably…
:::::::: sigh :::
been there, done that, and no three is not the charm…
And to quote a fellow ‘sparky’
"Radioactive spider, my ass. "
Thanks to CatBiker and Lightnin’ for the first hand information and to everyone else for the near miss stories. I think I’m gonna spend the next few days indoors.
There was the time at Boy Scout camp where I was standing in a field in a thunderstorm, thinking “Wow, that’s pretty close” when the tree 40 feet in front of me was struck by lightning. Being the adult leader around at the time, I decided that it was a good signal that perhaps we should go into the cabin nearby (everyone else in the troop was in a tent, I was the only one stupid enough to stand around outside like a moron).
The closest I’ve been to being struck by lightning was about two years ago. A friend and I went down the the river to kayak, we saw the storm coming, and we left. On our way out we realized that in order to keep the Yakima rack on top of the truck, we had to reach out of the windows and hold on to the metal bars with our hands. Recipe for disaster? You betcha
As we slowly drove past a few houses, unable to see due the torrential downpour, lightning struck a tree about 5 feet from the side of the road. We were both temporarily blinded, and our bladders were put to the test, but we were fine. It’s a damn good thing there were some trees around, or I might have turned into some sort of superhero
On another note, a friend of my mother’s has lost eight TVs to lightning strikes. You’d figure the fool would learn to unplug them…
Almost. It’s Roy Sullivan, not Ray. From this site:
I came close, once. I was sitting in my room (one of four in an apartment) working on an old computer when it sounded like someone had fired off a shotgun in the alley behind the house. I went out to see what it was, and some cable guys in the alley said our house had been hit. There was a black hole in the roof with a bit of smoke coming out of it. The current had travelled through the wiring and down the side of the house right outside the wall my computer was near, down into the breaker box and into the ground. Our light switches had little smoke flares coming out from around them that were scorched into the wallpaper, and my computer display was forever tilted about 5 degrees clockwise from square. My room-mate was in the shower at the time (right under the strike point), and didn’t even know what happened–just heard the bang. Not where I’d want to be.
I was at a company training session, and there was one of these ice breakers where everyone was supposed to give “two truths and one lie” about themselves. Most were pretty lame, but one woman stated “I’ve been struck by lightning, been blown away by a tornado, and I was born in Kansas.” Kansas turned out to be the lie… I kept my distance the rest of the time.
I did get to see lightning strike a big old cottonwood tree in my back yard as a kid… twice. The last time it knocked it down. Pretty impressive since it blew the bark about ten yards out, and when a 100 ft. tree falls, it gets your attention.
In October 1995, I was in Houston for a weekend. My friend and I went to watch Texas vs. Rice football, which was a night game. It started raining buckets. After the game (which Texas managed to lose), we decided to drive back to Austin. Well, we drove through a 10 year storm that night. Around the midway point, it was raining so hard that we were reduced to about 10 miles per hour in the center of the freeway. These storms were one of the two biggest storms we had of the 1990s (1993 and 1995 IIRC). At some point during the storm, lightning struck a tree right next to the car. The tree was split, my friend who was driving freaked out. We were so close (it probably branched to the car as well) that it fried the car radio. He didn’t drive at night for 2 years after that.
Supposedly my wife’s first cousin was struck by lightning, which fried her pretty good. She missed around a week of work. She was in the synagogue parking lot, so I really don’t want to know what she had been up to. It is a big family secret, but it is rumored that she believes she picked up psychic powers from the lightning hit.