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A Bolt From the Sky

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Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.

At ease, Civillians!

After all, it’s summertime – the season when lots of people dream of taking an afternoon nap in the soft grass beneath a shady tree. But before you relax remember this – the outdoor environment is dangerous and unpredictable, and there’s a good chance that just as you begin to drift off to sleep some backwoods cowboy will come riding through your peaceful glade on his ATV (All Terrain Vehicle).

And if you think that’s disturbing, just wait. Because I’m about to ride through your picnic on my ATW (Assume the Worst)-mobile!

Outside is NOT the place to be this summer. Sorry, but in case you missed it, my arch-enemy lightning has recently gone on a spree and is striking people at will.

Lighting is the safety maven’s nightmare – the Ace of Spades – a dealer of almost certain death striking randomly from the sky! This is the reason I became obsessed with security years go, and when it comes to lightning, no one A’sTW more vigorously than I.

People ask how they can be safe outside in a storm and I say don’t go outside! Stay inside! And while you are inside, keep far away from all windows, phones, television sets, reinforced concrete (including floors), electrical things, and plumbing.

Basiclly, if you can suspend yourself in mid-air without any physical support connecting you to the walls or ceiling inside a first floor room that is designed to be a place where you do Absolutely Nothing, then you might be safe from lightning!

Otherwise, you’re exposed.

Even people taking a bath or a shower can be shocked by lightning during a thunderstorm because current can be carried along by pipes and fixtures. Don’t believe me? Here’s a quote from the New York Times about being zapped in the shower:

Ron Holle, a former meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks lightning injuries, estimates that 10 to 20 people in the United States are shocked annually while bathing, using faucets or handling appliances during storms. “There are a ton of myths about lightning,” he said, “but this is not one of them.”

Just thinking about that gives me the willies. Now I know the true meaning of “Naked and Afraid.”

So my advice is to stay indoors this summer. Or if you go out, wear a fully insulated non-electricity conducting head-to-toe body suit.

And before you take a shower in the morning, check the weather radar! Sometimes there are good reasons to go to work smelling like you are a bit past your expiration date.

Yours in safety,
B.S.O.R.

I’m wondering if Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty begins each day mapping his paranoia on a worry chart – will it be asteroids or lightning today? After all, either one could strike suddenly and without warning.

Have you had a close encounter with lightning?

29 thoughts on “A Bolt From the Sky”

  1. I was at the us open played at hazeltine 20 years ago when the rain started they halted play and mike helmer and I went to find shelter. we stepped under cover at the nearby trees and when the rain started we felt a couple drops come through he branches and decided to move up the hill to find cover under a tent standing next to the cooler holding massive quantities of beverages for the crowd held captive by the event coordinators. we stood as the skies opened and the rain pored with a vicious hammering at the tarp above our heads quite thankful at our good fortune at seeking out the tarp in exchange for the earlier choice of the pine trees below. with that a monster lightning flashed, boomed and shook the ground and we said holy smoke or the equivalent and waited out the storm. in another 5 minutes the torrential downpour had ceased and the skies cleared enough to offer hope for resumed play and so we wandered back to the fairway below to continue our watching of the tournament. upon reaching the trees where we first took cover we were among the first to discover that the lightning clap had taken its toll on the collection of people knocked down like bowling pins below the tree. the lightning had hit with such force as to blow their shoes off. there were indentions on the skin on their feet where the shoes had been before they blew off like rubber band marks on you wrist from wearing a too tight rubber band for an extended period. the blackened skin and smoke coming off their feet was memorable. the poor folks were sitting up shell shocked with their eyes rolling inside their recently lit up heads. the look of confusion and loss to understand what had happened was apparent. not all of them were moving and those who were did not offer optimistic signs of recovery. i felt a complete mix of empathy and thankfulness for the reversal of possible fortunes. i hated to think of the pain and complications caused by the impact of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and yet felt more strongly the thankfulness that we had moved to the tent 50 yards away.
    thats as close as i ever need to come to being involved. i thought of this a month or so ago when i was watching my daughters ultimate frisbee tournament up in blaine when a monster storm rolled through. i had a wonderful spot inside a grove of pine trees next to the parking lot that offered total shelter form the rain and i sat covered as the rain poured. the storm was quick and hard hitting an the lightning and thunder boomed all around. the next day the news poke of the lady killed at the softball tournament a mile or so away. all i culd think of was how much i was enjoying the opportunity to be sitting in the midst of natures fury while the weather raged about me in that thicket of trees next to the parking lot and how she likely didn’t have a clue she was in trouble before she was zapped to past tense. life is random isnt it. be thankful and enjoy the moment is the takeaway huh?

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  3. Rise and Flash across the sky Baboons!

    As a kid in LeMars, Iowa, I had an awe-inspiring experience with lightening. Our backyard abutted a cul de sac that was the end of a street behind our house. The neighborhood was quite similar to the one I live in now–filled with 1960’s and 70’s era ranch or split entry homes with cement driveways leading to garages attached to the homes.

    One morning a rainstorm came along, complete with lightening and thunder. My mom was washing dishes at the kitchen sink looking out the window that looked out on the cul de sac. I was in my bedroom on the other side of the house. A teeth-rattling CRASH AND FLASH with no time delay at all, boomed out over the neighborhood, followed by the smell of ozone. A shriek came from my mother in the kitchen.

    Lightening struck the cul de sac, 30 yards behind our house, producing a ball of fire that rolled over the cul de sac, up the neighbor’s driveway, into their open garage starting a fire. The lightening ball left a brown and black, irredescent streak across the cement and a charred door from the neighbor’s garage entering the adjoining kitchen. The homeowner extinguished the fire.

    When the rain ended all the neighbors gawked, oohed and aahed.

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    1. I believe that should be “irridescent.” Why doesn’t auto-correct work when I need it–only when I don’t want it.

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  4. One of my standard questions when I do psychological evaluations is “Have you ever been struck by lightning?” You would be surprised how many people say “Yes.”

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  5. i had forgotten about my other golf outing. i used to love to play golf in the rain. if you get a good pair of gloves the grip on the golf club doesnt slide around in you hand so i always carried golf clubs with a good pair of gloves int he bag an when it rained i would go hit the course i would play while everyone else went back into the clubhouse. i was out with a sales manager one time and also with my dad and we were playing and the rain started. they agreed to play on in the rain but it turned form a rain into a torrential downpour with the rain coming down so hard you couldn’t see very far in front of you. we turned and went back to the clubhouse in the with the rain soaking us on the way. we got in and ordered a beer and grabbed a table over by the window overlooking the 10th tee to wait it out and flash boom the lightning struck the tree three feet for the window and we got ot see the sparks fly as the branch was scorched by the strike and the tar on the cart path below flew up in the air and left a huge scar where the path had been. the sales manager a former offensive lineman for the vikings did a real time jump up in the air as the strike flashed and he let out with a 9 year old girl scream and went down on all fours scurrying across the room to get away from the strike, he was only kind of apologetic after as he truly believed the tree was going to come crashing down on top of us. i handed him my 1 iron and said we should head back out. he wanted to know what the 1 iron had to do with it. i reminded him that even god cant hit a 1 iron.

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  6. last one…
    my house was hit by lightning in a sideways sense before i bought it. a bolt of lightning hit the underground sprinkler system and started the garage on fire where the electrical box hung on the wall. they stopped it before the house burned but the damage to the garage was a big deal. when rebuilding he decided to add a couple more stalls to the garage. so instead of the typical oppulent 3 car garage of the suburbs he built 2 more stalls on the back and when they were starting to back fill the cinder blocks they had put in to accommodate the two new stalls the owner asked them to turn the lower level into an additional garage stall for storing riding lawnmower, snow blowers rakes and fertilizer spreaders they gladly and profitably obliged. thanks to lightning i have one of my favorite attributes to my current hosue. i have a five car garage with added space that allow me to keep the lawn mowers out of the way. life can be simple, but sometimes it takes lightning and a bunch of money to make it happen.

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  7. Three encounters for me. Of course I’m an addicted golfer, which accounts for two of those three near misses.

    First time was golfing at Meadowbrook in Mpls. This was 25 or so years ago, before early warning systems for lightning. We were at the farthest point on the course from the clubhouse (of course!) when the heavens opened up and let loose their fury. We felt light we were dodging bullets the entire mile or so back to the clubhouse and made it, soaked but unscathed.

    By that time all the golfers were in the clubhouse waiting out the rain delay when “a bomb went off” and hit a huge oak that stood next to the clubhouse. Never heard an explosion so loud in my life. It blew out the TV, and golfers literally leapt from their chairs, dove under tables, sprang away from that side of the clubhouse, or, like me, were too stunned to move.

    I’m sure more than a few who hadn’t gotten their shorts wet during the retreat to the clubhouse to escape the rain were by then dealing with suddenly wet garments.

    Second time was a few years ago at my home course. We were putting on the ninth green just as a storm rolled in and got serious. Not 100 yards from us, a bolt hit a tree near the 18th tee box (a par 3, which is why it was so close). Our green was also guarded by large trees, so the strike could have easily been on one of our trees, or one of us. Needless to say, that round was over for the day.

    But the third event was the one I most thought would do me in. My father, his best friend, and my uncle were on a canoe trip on the Missouri River in north central Montana, a wild and scenic section more primitive than the BWCA. We’d stopped for the night, made camp, and gone to bed when the longest fiercest storm I’d ever encounter hit our camp. The wind blew so hard it collapsed our aluminum tent poles and drove the torrential rain through the fabric, soaking us to the bone in minutes. The lightning started about 10 pm and went nonstop until 4 am. Six hours of lightning that AVERAGED one flash per minute. You do the math.

    As I sat there wet, shivering, holding the tent pole in place, and flinching with every kaboom, I was certain this was to be my last night on earth. Yet here I am today, still golfing and canoeing, but much more respectful of the enormous power of Mother Nature. That phrase always reminds me of the old TV commercial:

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. i was referring to the meadowbrook lightning strike you refer to. the guy blown off his chair was my buddy the offensive lineman. we had the window seat. i only made it t the 4th or 5th hole by the time the storm hit. you must have been on the back 9 . small world

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  8. Good morning. I suppose everyone has heard the very loud sound of lightening hitting something not too far away. That is the limit of my experience with lightning. I have heard about one vey unusual encounter with lightning.

    My wife told me she saw a ball of lightning roll through a small apartment where she was living. It was a narrow apartment with a clear path between the front and back doors. The ball of lightning came in the back door and went out the front door. It might have been something like the ball of lightning that Jacque described above. The lightning when through without causing any damage.

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  9. Wowzer. I’m pretty glad that my closest encounters with lightning have been the kind when you see the bright Flash and the incredibly loud Crash of thunder immediately but are safe and dry indoors. These make good stories, but I’m happy to not have any good stories about close encounters with lightning.

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  10. Mine was painless and not scary but beautiful. I was flying over scattered clouds so I could still see land between the clouds. I was able to watch lightening going from the clouds down to the land from above. Spectacular!

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  11. I’m one of the lucky ones who can remember nothing special except sitting in a porch swing and watching the lightening show from afar. I’ll check with Husband…

    Was it on Northern Exposure that there was this one character who cane into the bar after getting hit for maybe the 17th time… could hardly complete a sentence.. ?

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