I started walking to the supermarket, hoping to get there and back before an impending storm. Going across my parking lot, I was startled by what sounded like several small firecrackers going off (which would be expected today), maybe 10-20 yards to my right. Before I could react and look, that quickly escalated to the sound of a salvo of bigger firecrackers, and in the space of a second or two, there was the deafening crack of thunder right next to me. I presume, the firecracker sounds were the feeler arcs preparatory to the lightning settling on its shortest path.
For long-distance walking, I wear construction boots, and it says on the bottom they are rated “electrical hazard resistant”. I wonder if that saved my life? I did not feel any static in my hair, but I was wearing a cap.
Anybody ever have similar experiences? Or been struck by lighting?
Your rubber boots are a pretty good insulator. Air is an even better one. Your boot soles are maybe an inch thick, tops. A bolt of lightning has already made it through a mile of air. Your boots are nothing to a lightning bolt.
I used to think this was true, but learned a while back it wasn’t. Once a friend and I were driving in Colorado high country when we drove through a very intense lightning storm. I pulled over and we assured each other we were fine as long as we stayed in the car. We were, but apparently by chance. The ozone smell was very strong and the hair on our arms was standing straight up and our head hair frizzed out. I’ve been in some similar storms while hiking and once saw lightning hit a tree and burn it briefly.
I’d like to hear GusNSpot’s story! Or a link to previous threads.
I don’t think that is how it works. Lightning doesn’t already “know” the most conductive path from A to B. A bunch of tentacle-like feelers start arcing, and the least resistant one carries the escalating current. As a result of the non-conductive rubber soles, I didn’t make the cut, and another path was chosen that had less resistance. Nearly everything conducts electricity (but to highly varying degrees), and the current chooses the path with the least resistance. An inch of rubber is all it takes to disqualify a path as being too resistant, compared to other alternatives.
Regarding tires, hat Alberta farmer whose car was struck by lighting a few weeks ago, might have had a nail in his tubeless tire, which had not yet gone flat, but enabled a current through the body metal, into the rims, through the air in the tire, to the point of that nail, which touched the ground. Which would have been much easier than the current busting through a rubber tire. Or a wire that broke off an O2 sensor and was dragging on the ground. In any case, cars being struck by lightning are so extremely rare, that it is obvious that there is normally no line of conductivity through a car to the ground.
Try a hurricane near a sea coast. With the air is full of salt-water spray, surprise surprise, it’s not such a good insulator.
I was at the Kewalo Basin marina in Honolulu during Hurricane Iwa, November 1982. At one point, I stepped outside, and walked under some power lines. I could feel the electricity in my hair and my ankles.
Our house was struck by lightening when I was about 13. It happened in the middle of the night. I was upstairs in bed, but awake because of the storm. It was the loudest most bright thing I’ve ever seen & heard. Luckily, it hit the phone line in the attic so no fire, plus it was pouring rain. Killed the tree it hit on the way to the roof, zapped the power and every phone line in the neighborhood, knocked the pictures off the wall, cracked the brick of the fireplace, and blew the key to the gas fireplace clear across the room hard enough to put a dent in the wood. Around 25 feet! Good thing no one was standing there, was shot out like a bullet! I got a phone line in my room out of the deal.
Still requires a leap through air, which is less preferable than a conductor straight to the ground. The charge gains something by going six feet through a body, but would still prefer something nearby that is grounded.
I’m pretty sure that rubber boots don’t guarantee any protection, but that they do make you a less efficient path than, say, if you were standing barefoot in a puddle.
My cousin told a good story when we were teens, back in the 70’s. He had just grabbed the car door handle to get in when lightning struck and he was thrown to the ground. His brother said his arm was glowing blue. After a moment he got up, a bit dazed. He walked back in side, got a beer from the fridge, sat next to his folks in the living room and drank it. When is father demanded to know what the hell he was doing, he said, “Well, when you’ve just been struck by lightning, you deserve a beer.”
Much to our disappointment, though, he did not develop any super powers. Well, if he did have a super power, it was being accident-prone, which kept him from being the star athlete in his school thanks to various broken bones over the years.
My parents had an experience like this. The lightning went from the tree, across a Ham radio antenna and into the house. Fried all my father’s radio and computer equipment, the phones, the doorbell, and several appliances.
One thing the OP should keep in mind is that some appliances and electronic devices may not show damage at first. My parents’ television and microwave seemed fine, but went kaput two weeks after the lightning strike. The insurance covered it as part of the original strike damage.
we had a dining room chandelier that my mother cleaned. when she reassembled it, it did not work. my uncle was an electrician and he came over. he couldn’t find anything wrong, it just wouldn’t work. we just figured we’d replace it at some point.
years passed…
then one summer afternoon, a line of thunder storms went through. my dad and i were in the living room, mum in the kitchen, the dining room between the 2 rooms.
a wee bit of lightening came through the window and hit the chandelier. kaboom, bright light! we turn to look and the thing is on, to its highest setting (it was a three way light). swinging back and forth; we called my uncle, he came right over. we all just watched it sway. we didn’t want to touch it.
once the storm was over, we turned it off then back on. it worked just fine. nothing fried, everything was fine, didn’t even blow the fuse, the light worked now. my uncle said that we were lucky that it wasn’t the main bolt.
now that i’m 10 stories up, lightening looks a lot closer, and a lot scarier.
When I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9, over 30 years ago I was at home with my mother and cousin during a storm. It started to hail and we went out on the porch to see the hail coming down. All of a sudden, there was a huge flash of lightning and thunder. We felt the electricity from the lightning as we stood on the porch, and I remember feeling the tingling sensation go up my arm. That’s the closest I’ve came to being struck by lightning.
If there’s a safe alternate path that’s better than you-in-boots, then it’s probably also better than barefoot-you, so the boots still aren’t making a difference.
Great story!