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Lightning Strikes

Take it from a meteorologist: If you see lightning, or hear thunder, please head indoors, or at least get into a vehicle and close the doors. Lightning can kill you dead, or worse, leave you horribly maimed for life. And severe weather can ruin your day in all sorts of other ways.

Now, it is true that noplace is *completely* safe during a thunderstorm, but you can improve your chances immensely by staying indoors and avoiding contact with large conductors like plumbing fixtures.

That said, I do love a good thunderstorm; it's what got me into the business.
 
Take it from a meteorologist: If you see lightning, or hear thunder, please head indoors, or at least get into a vehicle and close the doors. Lightning can kill you dead, or worse, leave you horribly maimed for life. And severe weather can ruin your day in all sorts of other ways.

Now, it is true that noplace is *completely* safe during a thunderstorm, but you can improve your chances immensely by staying indoors and avoiding contact with large conductors like plumbing fixtures.

That said, I do love a good thunderstorm; it's what got me into the business.
Yup, thunder and lightning are great but as you say, and you know what you're on about! lightning is dangerous.

There was a big charity bike race at the weekend where the forecast was stormy. As we know people who took part we discussed what we'd do if we'd entered it.

My take was that they could keep my fee as I was staying home! Damage limitation. :wink2:

Nothing bad happened on Race Day so maybe I'd have been over-cautious but I'm still right.

Obligatory scare story (which you no doubt already know all about)
Safe Road CC cycling website link -

Cyclist survived lightning strike - because he was wearing headphones

Zoran Jurkovic, now aged 41, had been riding his bike to his work on a farm near Petrovci in 2007 when a storm closed in, said 24 Sata in a report last week.

Instead of passing through his body, which doctors say would have stopped his heart and damaged internal organs, the charge went down the headphone cable, attached to a radio on his belt.

He was dressed in work clothes, including rubber boots, and instead of earthing via his feet, the charge earthed through his penis.

Yup, you read that correctly. The charge earthed through his penis. Through his penis.

Will be sending Techy this article. :rollingw:
 
No word about the state of his unfortunate penis?
Burned to a crisp?
 
This March 2010 blog post describes Jurkovic's status following his release from the hospital and the passage of time. This is the earliest post-incident follow-up I've been able to find.

Thunder keeps man indoors after lightning zaps genitals​

A man in Croatia has admitted that he has not gone outside after hearing thunder since lightning struck his penis in 2007.

Zoran Jurkovic, 35, from the eastern town of Vukovar, has recovered and says his penis functions well despite that lightning passed through it while he was riding a bicycle close to the village of Perkovci during a thunderstorm. ...

"My friends used to tease me, and I used to tease them back saying my penis might have extraordinary ability, but it doesn’t", Jurkovic said. He is very happy to have a functioning penis.

"Most of the bike melted. The doctors said that I must have been hit by tens of thousands of volts, but that the rubber in the tyres saved my life," he said at the time. He lives with his mother and has never been married.
SOURCE: http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2010/03/thunder-keeps-man-indoors-after.html

NOTE: This blog post includes a link to this Croatian news(?) item from March, 2010:

http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/P..._functioning_after_being_struck_by_lightning_

This Croatian link is dead, and the Wayback Machine is somehow unable to display the webpage even though it's seemingly archived there.
 
3 siblings injured by lightning strike while taking a group selfie sheltering under a tree near Hampton Court.

"The family were told it was possible that a titanium plate in Isobel's arm following a cycling accident last year might have been what led to the lightning surging through their bodies."

Isobel sounds like she attracts bad luck!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57825759
 
Hit in mid-air!

A Texas teen struck a golf ball, which was then, incredibly, struck by lightning. He was out with his friends at Topgolf in San Antonio when the golf ball flashed in mid-air along with a popping sound. His friends screamed while he ducked and jumped back. Fortunately nobody was injured.

One of his friends happened to catch the footage on her phone:

https://boingboing.net/2021/07/13/w...golf-ball-is-struck-by-lightning-mid-air.html
 
Yeah cos screaming always helps in any situation doesn't it, lol.
 
Four people were injured by a lightning strike at the Grand Canyon.
Lightning strike injures at least 4 people at Grand Canyon National Park

... According to information from the National Park Service, someone reported multiple people struck by lightning at the Bright Angel Trailhead at about 2:50 p.m. on Tuesday, July 20.

A 30-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman were found unresponsive, but the man regained consciousness on his own.

CPR and advanced life-saving interventions were performed on the woman, and she regained a pulse, before being taken to a hospital in Flagstaff. ...

Air transport was not available because of significant storm activity, so both patients were taken by ground transportation to the Flagstaff Medical Center. The woman is stable at a regional burn center.

At least two other patients took themselves to the Grand Canyon Clinic for treatment of lightning splash injuries.
SOURCE: https://www.kold.com/2021/07/21/lig...-4-people-injured-grand-canyon-national-park/
 

Snowdon: Two women hit by lightning at mountain summit

Two women are "very lucky" to be alive say rescuers, after they were hit by lightning on the summit of Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain.

The pair were in a five-strong group by its 3,560ft (1,085m) peak when they were struck just after 13:30 BST.

Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team was called out by North Wales Police to help rescue them.

The team said one woman "was falling in and out of consciousness", while the other had minor injuries.

Both women were evacuated from the summit to a lower slope, before a coastguard helicopter took them to hospital in Bangor, Gwynedd.

Rescuers said neither woman had sustained life-threatening injuries.
 

Lightning strike kills at least 16 from wedding party in Bangladesh

Group killed as they disembarked from boat to take refuge from thunderstorm

Lightning strikes are common across south Asia during the June to September monsoon, which is crucial to replenishing water supplies but also causes widespread death and destruction.

At least 23 people died on 11 July in Rajasthan state, including a dozen who were watching a storm cross Jaipur city from watchtowers near the 12th-century Amer Fort. Officials told local media that some of those killed had been taking selfies during the storm.
 
This Florida driver's dashcam recorded the lightning strike that disabled his pickup truck - apparently permanently. The strike didn't seem all that catastrophic in the video, but it seems to have "fried" everything in the truck.
Florida man's truck totaled by lightning strike caught on dash cam

A Florida man's dashboard camera was rolling when a bolt of lightning struck his brand-new 2020 Ford Ranger truck and put the vehicle "in intensive care." ...

"I saw a few people that were just stragglers leaving the beach. And I said to myself, those are the type of people who get hit by lightning because they're just leaving too late, and continued going. Turns out, they weren't the people that got hit by lightning, I was," Foraker told WINK-TV.

Foraker's dashboard camera was recording when a bolt of lightning struck his vehicle, causing it to shut down. ...

The driver, who was not injured, was able to pull over to the side of the road.

The truck, which only had 4,000 miles on it, was badly damaged. ...

He said the truck was in the shop for 40 days while mechanics tried to revive it, but he is now resigned to simply buying a replacement vehicle. ...
FULL STORY (With Video): https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/0...ack-Foraker-Lee-County-Florida/2891628712703/
 
Until recently, I had no idea that a vehicle could be struck by lightning.
I mean, the vehicle is a Faraday cage, covered in glass and insulated from the road by rubber tyres.
 
As I understand it, it's not the rubber on the tyres that provide insulation as anyway the bolt of lightning has energy to travel maybe up to a few thousand feet through the air so six inches of rubber won't make much different rather it's the metal casing of the vehicle itself. The lightning hits the metal, goes around it or conducts it, and carries on to the ground.

It's also a thing called potential difference (PD) that causes electrocution. If a person touches a 240 volt live wire, then it's the difference in voltage between the live wire, them and the ground. It would be 240 volts. If the person was in a faraday cage, the 240 volts would be conducted through the faraday cage to the ground and not through the person. So the PD through the person would be zero.

Or rather that's how I remember it from 35 years ago when during an engineering apprenticeship I did a years worth of high voltage engineering. I saw a faraday cage demonstration via a huge Van der Graff generator in action with a person sitting inside the faraday cage. It was frightening. Along with the other dozen or so apprentices I declined the offer to try it for myself.
 
Until recently, I had no idea that a vehicle could be struck by lightning.
I mean, the vehicle is a Faraday cage, covered in glass and insulated from the road by rubber tyres.

My late dad was RAF aircrew. When a plane was struck by lightning in flight, then landed, the crew were instructed to jump from the last rung of the boarding ladder to the ground, so as not to earth the aircraft.

A valid concern? Foaftale? UL?

:dunno:

maximus otter
 
I always thought that when a plane in flight was struck by lightning that the lightning didn't stop there but continued to the ground?
The physics behind that being that the lightning is a product of the difference in electrical capacitance/resistance (?) between the earth and the clouds, or some other similar science-y stuff (I'm not an expert).
The plane is merely getting in the way.
That being the case I don't see the need for the jumping off the ladder - none of the lightning is going to be stored in the body of the plane, and even if it did, the carbon in the tyres is enough to allow any static discharge to occur upon landing.
Maybe it was just the RAF ground crew 'little joke' with the aircrew, either that or aircrew clothing was made from polyester or some other such man-made material and generated a bit of static when rubbing against the seats in the aircraft?
 
Aircraft are earthed before refuelling and the cable used in helicopter rescues can carry
a debilitating charge due to static build up.
 
Security guard’s umbrella vaporised in lightning strike

The man miraculously survived the incident, which was caught on camera, as he was struck and then collapsed. The umbrella completely disappeared

From Sukapura, N. Jakarta.

Short video.

1640702409673.png
 
Does being struck by lightning result in brain changes? If you survive.
 
It can do. Nerve damage. :(

That's the sort of thing I was wondering about. Rather than psychological changes.


(waves at Twinnie enthusiastically, whether he likes it or not :hapdan:)
 
Here's a layman's summary from a legal site specializing in brain and neural injuries.
Lightning Strike Acquired Brain Injury

A lightning strike can cause brain damage by affecting the function of the central nervous system, motor neurons, and peripheral nerves. Lightning can also cause the heart to stop, cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain. In either case, the result may be a lightning strike acquired brain injury.

While a lightning strike acquired brain injury is similar to those from other electrical shocks, they are usually much more severe in nature. ...

Lightning strike acquired brain injuries are often diffuse, affecting large areas of the brain. Some of the temporary and lasting effects of a lightning strike brain injury include:

  • Loss of consciousness
  • Muscular pain, weakness, and discomfort
  • Severe general fatigue
  • Headaches
  • Loss of sensation, numbness, and other peripheral nerve conduction concerns
  • Poor balance and coordination
  • Slowed mental processing
  • Lack of attention, concentration, and focus
  • Concerns with short-term memory and other memory loss
  • Psychological symptoms, including personality changes
  • Dizziness and disorientation
  • Depression
FULL STORY: https://www.brainandspinalcord.org/faqs/abi/can-lightning-strike-cause-acquired-brain-injury/
 
Here's a 1995 abstract summarizing the range of possible damages. Many peer-reviewed research papers on the subject can be found online.


Kleinschmidt-DeMasters BK.
Neuropathology of lightning-strike injuries
Semin Neurol. 1995 Dec;15(4):323-8.
doi: 10.1055/s-2008-1041039. PMID: 8848648.

Abstract
When a person is struck by lightning a spectrum of neurologic damage can result. Approximately one third of the strikes prove to be fatal. The possibility of damage to the CNS relates to the type of lightning injury (direct strike, stride potential, or side flash), the intensity and duration of the current, the pathway of the current within the body, and secondary injuries to brain either from cardiac arrest and hypoxia or from physical trauma. Direct strikes to the head have a high degree of fatality and often result in petechiae or larger brain hemorrhages. Although there may be some predilection for the petechiae to occur in the brainstem, the larger hemorrhages may be particularly located near the pathway of the electrical current and result from direct damage to brain vasculature. Enlarged perivascular spaces seen histologically are relatively subtle; they have been attributed to the effects of gas bubbles from electrolysis, heat formation, or both. Small vessel thrombi and neuronal changes may be present nearby. Some brain tissue softening and edema may be direct effects of passage of current. Often, however, hypoxic encephalopathy and cerebral edema occur following cardiopulmonary arrest when the passage of the current through the body presumably generates cardiac arrhythmias. Considerably less is known about the spinal cord injuries in lightning strike, although one detailed recent study suggests that demyelination may be an underlying mechanism. Similarly, myelin damage appears to be a feature of electrical and possibly lightning injury to the peripheral nervous system.

SOURCE: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8848648/
 
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