Thunderstorm? Skip the shower

August 18, 2022 9:57 AM

Most people are familiar with basic thunderstorm safety, such as avoiding standing under trees or near a window, and not speaking on a corded phone (mobile phones are safe). But did you know you should avoid taking a shower, a bath or washing the dishes during a thunderstorm? James Rawlings, Physics Lecturer for Nottingham Trent University, explains why it's not safe to shower during a thunderstorm for The Conversation.
posted by Bella Donna (71 comments total)

Also if your city/town has a combined sewer or really even if it has a separated one, adding wastewater into the system during a heavy rain event can overload the system and result in overflows and spills. So don't do your dirty dishes or do all your laundry on rainy days!
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:16 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I was reading up on lightning safety a bit when I got trapped in a particularly scary thunderstorm while backpacking a few months ago, and it was a lot more interesting than I expected.

I think the thing that surprised me most was just how little is known about actual risk factors for getting hurt by lightning, and how much the accepted wisdom about how to stay safe from lightning in backcountry situations has changed in the past ~50 years.

None of this applies in urban areas or if you have a car you can get into, but if you are stuck outdoors, there's a "lightning position" that you're supposed to get into (crouching on the balls of your feet, with your feet as close together as possible), with the idea that it reduces the voltage differential in a ground strike, but… we literally don't know if it works or not, since people getting stuck in thunderstorms outdoors is so uncommon, and obviously it's not something we can go out and test on purpose.

Wisdom about how lightning makes its path to the point where it strikes has also changed significantly — we've known enough to be able to make lightning rods for a long time (since the mid to late 1700s), but we don't really know very much about how lightning paths in natural environments, and different experts give very differing opinions on what the most important risk factors are.

If you're interested, NOLS has a good PDF with some details.
posted by wesleyac at 10:26 AM on August 18, 2022 [13 favorites]

What are the statistics on any of these indoor activities where a lightning strike affected a person?
We have data about deaths or strokes outdoors, under trees etc...
posted by lalochezia at 10:26 AM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I know I shouldn't take a shower during a thunderstorm but I confess to doing it a lot in my lifetime!
posted by Kitteh at 10:26 AM on August 18, 2022 [17 favorites]

Thanks for the advice, spamandkimchi and the PDF, wesleyac. It is not clear to me if the advice about showering, etc., is mostly applicable to single-family homes or if I, a mere apartment dweller, am at risk during a thunderstorm as well.

I grew up in a part of California that did not have thunderstorms. My new-ish town in Sweden has thunderstorms. I find them scary. One particular fact confirmed my fears: "Lightning strikes can happen as far as ten miles away from the parent storm." I mean, yikes.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:31 AM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Bella Donna — I don't remember if that PDF talks about it, or if it was some other bit of NOLS literature, but one thing I recall reading was about how extremely safe modern buildings and cars are when it comes to lightning — they actually specifically mention that when teaching people about other ways of mitigating lightning risk, it's important to make sure they know that it's only applicable if you literally can't get to a building or a car, since there's risk that people might know just enough to be dangerous if you teach them only the outdoor lightning safety side of things.

One thing the CDC site that's linked to mentions is that plastic pipes are apparently safer than metal ones, so you could look into which kind of piping your building has.
posted by wesleyac at 10:39 AM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

obviously it's not something we can go out and test on purpose.

Well, not with that attitude...
posted by The Tensor at 11:00 AM on August 18, 2022 [36 favorites]

Is it a good idea to get wet and naked during a scenario where the weather might get worse and cause drama?
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:02 AM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

obviously it's not something we can go out and test on purpose.

Here, hold this wire for a second
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:13 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Good lord but this is taking theoretical safety concerns to an extreme. Not that it's a particular problem for me; in a thunderstorm I'm too busy sitting out on the porch admiring the show.
posted by Nelson at 11:33 AM on August 18, 2022 [18 favorites]

What are the statistics on any of these indoor activities where a lightning strike affected a person?
We have data about deaths or strokes outdoors, under trees etc...

David - Pinson, AL. In bathroom taking shower. Depression, psychic abilities I'm not sure if he lost them or gained them.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:38 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Thunderstorms definitely take some getting used to, they can feel like the wrath of God is coming down on you. Having grown up with seasonal afternoon thunderstorms, I enjoy a good one. Now, I live somewhere where they happen during large chunks of the year, anytime day or night, and can last for hours. Like this morning, I wouldn't have been able to shower before work if I waited for the thunderstorm to stop. I mostly don't think about it.

I did notice that neither the main article or the CDC page it links to offer any kind of data for how often people get injured by lightning while inside their homes. I'd be very curious to know. The main article links to this very interesting report as its source for the 24,000 global deaths per year from lightning. Apparently the death rate for lightning strikes drops pretty precipitously with urbanization and modernization. The paper settles on a global rate of 6 deaths per million per year from lightning, with a rate of .3 per million in modern or urbanized areas.
posted by skewed at 11:41 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm against living in fear. I think people should do whatever they want when there's lightning nearby.
posted by bleep at 11:47 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

"Also avoid using anything plugged into an electrical outlet (computers, TVs, washing machines, dishwashers) as all of these can provide pathways for the lightning strike to take. "

Are we supposed to just read books by candle light or is it ok to churn butter?

I've lived in Florida, where we have thunderstorms all of the time, almost my whole life and I've never once heard of someone getting struck by lightning while indoors.
posted by oddman at 11:50 AM on August 18, 2022 [11 favorites]

If you read the list of survivor stories, talking on a land-line phone during a thunderstorm is far more dangerous.

If you look at the locations of deaths, they need to dial it back with showering thing and really advertise not to stand under trees during storms.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:53 AM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I heartily approve of printing what seem like obvious weather warnings.

Mrs Abehammerb grew up in one of the areas of the country lacking thunderstorms. I'm from the Saint Louis Area, and oh boy do big ones roll in off the plains. It didn't occur to me prior to some family visits that there are deeply rooted childhood lessons specific to different regions of the country.

Visiting in mid-August we took baby Abehammerb to the Saint Louis zoo. I heard the rumble, saw the horizon rapidly darkening, and told her "We need to find shelter."
"OK, after we look at the bears."
"Oh no, I mean, we like, uh, need to get under cover right now." She looked at me like I was overdoing it a bit.

The next 20 minutes were a crazytownshitshow Gotterdammerung of rolling lightning discharges accompanied by almost continuous earth-shaking thunder.

Afterward, shaking a bit she asked, "How the fuck did you grow up in this?"

I told her that earthquakes made me ask her the same thing.


Another time a little further out in the country she was having a lovely time watching the green swirly clouds overhead from our hotel balcony. "I've never seen clouds like this before!"
"Yep, it's really cool, but if I tell you we need to move fast, we're heading into the bathroom and lying down in the bathtub as quick as we can, OK?"
"Ah shit, is this tornado stuff?"
"Maybe, it feels like it's pretty close to being one."

Sure enough, next town over caught a medium sized twister right in the Walmart.


This probably comes across like she's naive or oblivious or incapable...she's not any of that. She's one of the most level-headed, practical, smartest people I've ever known, but those unfamiliar weather patterns put her at risk.

Hell, I don't know how I grew up in that. I'm irresponsible as all heck, but every kid from the area knows when not to mess with Mother Nature.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:02 PM on August 18, 2022 [39 favorites]

I worked with a waitress in Oklahoma who had lightning stories. She and her husband had rented a small house in the country. The rent was cheap. The roof was covered in lightning rods. It was on the highest ground for miles in any direction. In Oklahoma. When it thundered they would sit in the middle of the room in wooden chairs away from any metal or grounds. Once her toaster had a hole blown in it. She had an entire drawer of flatware welded together. A plastic shower curtain was vaporized in a puff. They moved...
posted by jim in austin at 12:03 PM on August 18, 2022 [39 favorites]

Thanks for that link, The_Vegetables. One poor individual has been struck by lightening 3 times in 3 different locations. Another was "Installing plumbing inside house," which sounds bad.

I'm against living in fear. I think people should do whatever they want when there's lightning nearby.

I don't live in fear. I also think people should do whatever they want when there's lightning nearby. And whenever there's lightening nearby, I want to stay the hell out of its way.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:03 PM on August 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

I grew up on a farm with cistern water and was always cautioned about bathing with a storm happening. The whole loop of water from start to end with the septic system was less than 500 feet, so if lightning hit, there was a path to you that was pretty direct.

We also unplugged most of our electronics and land line phones. Between cost of replacement and old wiring without grounding, everything could have blown in a hurry.
posted by deezil at 12:11 PM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

What's the number of people killed or injured in the shower during a thunderstorm vs. people outdoors near a tree, holding a golf club, etc.? To say it's "not safe" seems overcautious to me. If there's a lightning strike that affects your home, it might not be safe but it's much less dangerous than, say driving 2 miles to the store on a sunny day, statistically. Right?

Weather.gov has some anecdata about people who've survived - only a few seem to be indoors one is related to plumbing. I didn't see any about showers. Two poor people apparently were hit once indoors and once outdoors... they should be super-cautious.

(Grew up in the midwest... thunderstorms were super common. I don't think anybody ever worried about showering or using the phone during one...)
posted by jzb at 12:19 PM on August 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

I don't think i can function with this kind of guidance, but then i guess, being from an urban area with one of the highest number of lightning strikes in the world (1; 2) (and here's a time lapse photo), we probably figured some stuff out (like apparently a new design for lightning protection for buildings).
posted by cendawanita at 12:20 PM on August 18, 2022 [9 favorites]

I didn’t even realize until now that there were parts of the USA that didn’t get some form of thunderstorm (and if you want to tell me about where they are that would be awesome)
posted by raccoon409 at 12:22 PM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

raccoon409, I'd say growing up in Los Angeles we got thunder and lightning maybe once every several years. It was a surpassingly rare occurrence, even in years when we got a lot of rain. In the Seattle area where I live now it certainly doesn't happen every year. We've gotten maybe four dramatic electrical storms in the last eight years, with maybe a handful of smaller storms that mumble out a few strikes before they quiet down.

I really love showering during thunderstorms, unfortunately! Our shower has a window so if I shower during a storm it's almost like I'm out in it, only safer. Apparently less safer than I thought!
posted by potrzebie at 12:30 PM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

A couple in the list linked above who were hit by lightening in their home reported no medical impacts "but lost two expensive computer systems." So yeah, that's a thing. Abehammerb Lincoln, thank you for the story about Mrs Abehammerb. I grew up in California. Earthquakes are not fun but I know what to do if one strikes. Thunderstorms just aren't part of my experience from a life mostly in the larger San Francisco Bay Area.

Here in central Sweden, there's a shopping center maybe 2.5 kilometres away that I sometimes go to with my grandkids. Part of the trip is through woods. Part is open. There was a thunderstorm yesterday. Today I couldn't tell if another thunderstorm was in the cards and lightening might occur. It's one thing for me to just traipse off and hope for the best. I absolutely don't want to potentially expose my grandkids to danger. Rain is great. Potential lightening, not so much. Anyway, today's thunderstorm just started and the grandkids are tucked away in bed.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:33 PM on August 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

The last link in cendawanita ‘s comment is GREAT, nb. Funny, educational, applied math, human drama, moderately happy ending, the whole shebang.
posted by clew at 12:46 PM on August 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

Good lord but this is taking theoretical safety concerns to an extreme. Not that it's a particular problem for me; in a thunderstorm I'm too busy sitting out on the porch admiring the show.

I have admired many a thunderstorm through a window and a few through an open doorway. A handful I have been lucky enough to view from a screened-in porch, and some twenty years ago in Bali, my sweetie and I spent the night in a canopy bed on a roofed-over (but otherwise open-air) pavilion, watching torrential rain and high-drama tropical lightning crashing all around us.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:08 PM on August 18, 2022 [7 favorites]

I love living in the Bay Area, CA. but I miss thunderstorms SOOO much. growing up in NJ they were very common every summer and sometimes quite fierce. even as a little kid I was out on the porch, with my Dad, watching in awe and glee. (while mom and sisters were hiding under some furniture deep in the house).
posted by supermedusa at 1:12 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I didn’t even realize until now that there were parts of the USA that didn’t get some form of thunderstorm

I don't know if there are any parts that don't get some form of thunderstorms at all - but they're more common in some areas than others. When I moved to Denver I was struck (heh) by how infrequent actual thunderstorms seemed to be. Rain, sure - but an actual thunderstorm with heavy thunder & lightning seemed rare. See most stormy and least stormy.

This page claims Denver sees 41 days with thunderstorms per year - which doesn't quite seem right to me, but maybe I'm misremembering, lived there during off years, or was traveling too much. I recall a lot of light afternoon showers but few actual storms.
posted by jzb at 1:17 PM on August 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just for an alternative perspective, CBC Ideas had a great show called "Thunderbirds" (pre-Internet times, if that's a real thing) which was a series of interviews with Ojibway people in Ontario & Manitoba about their beliefs about thunderstorms, & how they related to these vast weather systems with seemingly random lightning strikes. There was a lot of cool stuff about the why of Thunderbirds, but the part I remember best was the old people's advice about how to avoid attracting the Thunderbird's attention: they thought you should cover up anything shiny like mirrors or windows, or freshly disturbed areas, like a newly cut tree stump. The show didn't offer any statistics about how effective these methods were.
posted by sneebler at 1:19 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

One of my grandmothers always told me not to touch light switches or phones or take showers if it was raining. I thought she was just being a worrywart, which was usually true, or maybe thinking about wiring in the country fifty years ago. It blows me away to realize she was right.

Thunderstorms on the plains are terrifying. I rode through a couple of frog-stranglers in Texas, and even in an SUV, it seemed like we might be swept off the road.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:27 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Years ago, a lightning strike near my parent's house caused their landline phone (1960's standard Bell-issue) to, in my Mom's words, "jump into the air", and land in the middle of the living room floor. The phone's handset had one of those stretchable "curly cord" wires , into which someone (a grand-kid, most likely) had left a #2 pencil stuck in its coils. Crazily, all that was left of that pencil was the graphite "lead", still connected to the metal ferrule that had held the eraser -- all of the wood and the eraser were just _gone_, apparently vaporized. So yeah, I don't talk on land lines during thunder storms.
posted by TwoToneRow at 1:27 PM on August 18, 2022 [18 favorites]

I'm into dying like this. I want the whole sudden death thing.

Watched my dad die of a combination of covid and Parkinson's and cancer earlier this year -- now I'm totally into 'massive heart attack' or 'unsurvivable car crash' or 'died in the shower during lightning storm while drinking shower beer'.

Sorry to be creepy. But having a piano drop on my head and kill me is now totally my death jam. I've seen trying to eek out a bit more life and uh.....thanks but no.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:28 PM on August 18, 2022 [25 favorites]

In the late 80s, during a big thunderstorm in rural Missouri (about an hour from STL), my family was all in the living room when a huge ball lightning (think bouncy yoga ball big) slowly floated 25 feet through the room. It went through the door to the laundry room and then fried the washer. My dad looked around and said, "...And that's another reason why we don't shower or talk on the phone during thunderstorms!"
posted by schyler523 at 1:46 PM on August 18, 2022 [11 favorites]

I'm into dying like this. I want the whole sudden death thing.

Yeah, one of my high school classmates died of a lightning strike during a camping trip at, er, age 23? 24? He was the first of our cohort to go. It was terrible news at the time but now I look around at the rest of us decades on, dying of cancer, post-operative infection, and heart disease (or with distant early warning signs of dementia), and I think maybe Chris went the right way and the rest of us got the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:55 PM on August 18, 2022 [10 favorites]

Number of lightning strikes in the US, 2021 (scroll down to second map). World Lightning Map (1995 to 2002). Lightning Flash Rate (Global, 1995 to 2013). For the past few years we've had very precise data on specific lightning strikes from satellites but I can't find a really good detailed map showing a yearly picture. The current sites mostly focus on last 24 hours.
posted by Nelson at 1:58 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Relevant xkcd.

Apparently my risk is zero.
posted by rochrobbb at 2:17 PM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think that I last had a conversation about lightning with someone who was part of a crew organizing a bicycle ride and didn't want to postpone it when thunderstorms were expected; they were like, you don't ride during the rain? Sure, can and do, but thunderstorms? In the midwest, if you're riding between soybean fields or when the corn isn't that tall yet, you may be the tallest thing around for miles, on your metal bike.

And to those who are fatalistic about it, well, it's your life, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm in the I'd-rather-go-out-while-doing-the-nasty-with-$10K-on-my-credit-cards school.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:26 PM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

I didn’t even realize until now that there were parts of the USA that didn’t get some form of thunderstorm (and if you want to tell me about where they are that would be awesome)

Here's a map (scroll down slightly)

In short, most of the West Coast has less than 5 days on average a year, and having grown up in Los Angeles myself I agree anecdotally that they were very rare in my recollection -- it very rarely rained at all in the summer (the average rainfall in July in my hometown is 0.6mm, or 1/50th of an inch).

It's for largely the same reasons that tropical storms also don't affect the (US) West Coast to any significant degree -- the Pacific is too cold and you can't get the atmosphere instability you need.
posted by andrewesque at 2:27 PM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

I lived in San Francisco for a year or so, and just a couple of weeks after I arrived there, they got a thunderstorm. I was out at a club, and I was very amused at how everyone else was freaking the hell out about it. By Illinois standards, it was definitely a credible thunderstorm, maybe even a little above average, but not panic-worthy. It really helped me dial in to appreciate just how rare and out of the ordinary the event was for the Bay.
posted by notoriety public at 2:40 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

obviously it's not something we can go out and test on purpose.

Well, not with that attitude...

Experiments of DC Human Body Resistance I [incompliancemag]
posted by porpoise at 2:54 PM on August 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

3 people died, 1 survived and she has been giving anguished interviews re survivors guilt after getting hit by lightning because they sheltered under a tree in Lafayette Park (right near the White House) in a bit of a (slightly-thunderstorms are not unexpected in the Mid-Atlantic summer) random thunderstorm a few weeks ago. I wasn't born here, but I've officially lived here longer than the West coast of my birth, and I have never heard of people getting struck by lightning in front of the White House.
posted by atomicstone at 4:20 PM on August 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Raised in Cleveland and I definitely grew up with the don't talk on the phone or take a shower during a thunderstorm. Also unplugged the computers too.
posted by kathrynm at 4:42 PM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Grandmother would turn off lights and not talk on the phone as well.
posted by aiq at 4:51 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ha! I scrolled to this post seconds after telling my kid that she couldn't take a shower because I just heard thunder.
posted by belladonna at 5:18 PM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Living in Chicago was my first real exposure to thunderstorms, complete with thunderclaps so loud that they would set off the car alarms. Here in Western NY, we generally have one or two real bangers a year; one of my colleagues had the unpleasant experience of his TV exploding when a bolt hit near his house.

I hadn't known about showers, although I've always avoided using anything electric.

My closest encounter with a lightning bolt was in a plane that got struck while in flight--a huge blueish-white FLASH and everyone saying, "wait, wut?" Nobody got hurt and the plane wasn't damaged; the bolt just went straight through.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:59 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I grew up in an area with a decent amount of thunderstorms (Houston), though not as severe as what some of y'all are describing, yet I have no good knowledge of what to do when there's a thunderstorm. The two things I know ("stay away from trees" and "don't be the tallest thing around") are mutually contradictory in Houston, because it's flat as a pancake. Obviously, the key is "go indoors," but if you're out in the countryside, you're basically fucked:
If you stand next to a tree, you're in danger.
If you move away from the tree, you're now standing in the middle of a field, making you the tallest thing around, so you're in danger.
posted by Bugbread at 6:29 PM on August 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

As posted above, not being the tallest thing the electricity wants to follow up from the ground to the clouds is very good advice.

Once in the military we got stranded out in the field because our inbound helicopters were waved away by lightning. We flipped them off as they flew away, because we could feel the air pressure changing, knew we were stuck in it, and about to at the very least get sopping wet. We dropped all our metal gear, weapons etc in the middle of a field, made a wide circle around it and just lay spread eagled so we wouldn’t be struck. Good times.

Closest I’ve been to a strike was also in the military, about 20 feet from an oak tree that just blew all to pieces. If you think thunder far away is loud, let me tell you, right next to you it is so fast and loud you just freeze until your heart starts going again. It was one of the loudest things I heard in the Army, and I was a professional blow things up guy.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:25 PM on August 18, 2022 [13 favorites]

I like thunder storms, although we have learned to be alert. A few years ago in a major storm that was going on for what seemed like hours with tremendous lightning--much of it cloud to ground. There was a lightning strike in the back yard right outside the window. It was so loud--indescribably loud--and bright. Like Abehammerb Lincoln says, you 'freeze until your heart starts again.' My immediate response was to crouch down and cover my head. The electricity in the house went nuts--all the smoke/carbon monoxide alarms screaming and of course, no lights or other electrics. The cats went wild--shooting hair out in every direction and heading to deep hiding. Took a few days to coax them out. Took the electric company to reset everything--they showed up at 1;30am, during the storm. We only lost one TV--everything else survived.

Another time driving between small Iowa towns in a torrential thunderstorm, all the lightning--again cloud to ground--was red. Eerie.

And a PSA--Learn CPR. My cousin's 13 year old was struck by lightning two weeks ago. She was out cold and her parents/doctors credit her uncle with saving her life by immediately starting CPR until the ambulance arrived. She woke up in the hospital about 24 hours later, with no memory of what happened. The story has a happy ending--she is fully recovered and only had minor burns on each arm and is sore from the CPR. The whole episode, needless to say, was extraordinarily frightening.
posted by Nosey Mrs. Rat at 8:27 PM on August 18, 2022 [10 favorites]

I love a good thunderstorm, but being in Seattle we don't see them often. That lack of familiarity made for a close call once when I was working at the top of a 350' broadcast tower. We had just got settled in to work when it got really dark all of the sudden as some clouds rolled in. "Maybe we should head down." "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." BOOM! I'm guessing it was cloud to cloud because neither of us got fried, but I did see a blue spark jump from the tower to my hand. We were working on rappel lines so the decent was pretty damn quick.

My favorite storm was in Athens. We were staying in The Plaka with a nice view of the Acropolis and lightning was coming down left and right. We sat in our room with the doors to the balcony open with a bottle of wine and enjoyed the show. I swear one strike hit the building just across from us. I've never experienced a strike so loud or bright.
posted by calamari kid at 8:50 PM on August 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

If you read the list of survivor stories, talking on a land-line phone during a thunderstorm is far more dangerous.

One complicating factor with the shower scenario is that a shower is actually a common place to have a heart attack so it is less likely to be recognised as a lightning event. Given the location of your heart and the geometry of being covered in water versus holding a phone I suspect you're also less likely to survive it.

If you want to know the best type of place to be standing if you're caught in the open in a lightning storm it is similar to an outdoor switching yard at an electrical substation as they are designed to reduce the risk to staff during a high voltage ground fault. Switching yards are constructed with a surface layer of gravel or asphalt for insulation which sits on top of a buried grid of conductors that sit parallel to the surface and limit the potential horizontal difference in voltage. I wouldn't go hang out near a substation or power line though as power line strikes are very common and you are often at a higher risk near the earthing path from the power line.

Basically you want to be standing on the best insulation you can find without being too close to something that could create a large horizontal voltage differential like a pipe or creek or anything metal.
posted by zymil at 8:54 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Portland, OR gets exactly one thunderstorm per year. It is in the middle of April, and it is a real dud. You hear one, maaaaybe two distant booms, and then it doesn't even rain. It is nothing like the fireworks-and-tornados show (with an optional Noah's flood) that happens every summer Tuesday in the midwest.
posted by polecat at 9:52 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

The problem with thunderstorms in California these days is that they often come with increased risk of starting wildfires, so it's not just the chance of being struck by lightning that gets people agitated.
posted by Aleyn at 10:21 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don’t think the prohibition against showering in a storm is relevant in homes built in the last 20-30 years since PEX tubing started replacing copper pipes. PVC/ABS supplanted cast iron drains about 40-50 years ago.

It used to be common practice to bond the electrical ground to the pipes but now code requires connection to the reinforcing steel in the foundation as well as a series of solid copper rods driven into the ground.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:23 PM on August 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

frog-stranglers

Thank you, Countess Elena! I have never heard or read this phrase before. Only for rainy weather or does it apply to other things?
posted by Bella Donna at 2:01 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

As a young child in RI, I was at my grandmother's home during the summer months while my parents were at work.
When afternoon thunderstorms struck we sat at the table in the basement which was equipped with a sink and stoves. My fear of severe storms began when my grandmother would start her wailing and ranting. She was born in Calabria and was very superstitious. She also would put soap in my mouth when I said certain things. The God is bowling tale did not ally my fear. That initial fear has stuck with me for most of life, particularly with cloud to ground lightening strikes that are close. I later learned to slowly count after I saw the lightning to determine the distance from the lightening to where I was. I still am not thrilled with close strikes that shake the house.
posted by DJZouke at 5:16 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also, don't flush your toilet during a thunderstorm or your fate will be an amalgam of Metallica album covers.
posted by acb at 5:48 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

If you think thunder far away is loud, let me tell you, right next to you it is so fast and loud you just freeze until your heart starts going again.

I witnessed a lightning strike pretty close to me when I was on my grandpa's farm, and it took a few seconds for me to realize that I was still alive.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:12 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is news? My mom cautioned us about sinks and tubs during storms when I was a kid in the 1960s.

I have some experience with the electrical and phone line effects -- a lightning strike on an older house I was housesitting in the 80s in OH blew the old fusebox off the wall in the basement and started an intense fire (fortunately there was a proper extinguisher handy and I saved the place for the eternally grateful owners, and happily an electrician upgraded things afterward to circuit breakers), and a strike on a utility pole outside a rental in Syracuse in the 90s blew out my answering machine, the simple corded phone, and an old-school modem all attached to the telephone jack (that one was dramatic -- I still remember the weird, intense screech that was the answering machine's fading death cry). Ditto the few seconds of "what the actual fck just happened" daze in both cases after the flash and bang. Good times.
posted by aught at 8:29 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

Oh god, fuse boxes. I remember my grandfather showing me that you "could" in an emergency put a penny in instead of a fuse as a conductor, but that it was a really good way to burn down your house.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:35 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

A lightning strike killed 343 reindeer at once in Norway.

All the research says lightning is more powerful in lower latitudes, but that must have been one hell of a strike.

When I was 12 and playing baseball in a mountain town at an elevation above 10,000 ft, a huge and deafening bolt of lightning struck a rock spire on a mountainside about 100 ft above the field and 100 ft beyond the stands; clouds were on the horizon and obscured the Sun, but the sky above was blue.

We just kept playing, but I was pitching, happened to be looking in that direction, and was blinded, so I had to call time for about a minute.

It never did actually rain.
posted by jamjam at 11:45 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Th reindeer incident got me thinking about antlers and lightning, but googling "St. Elmo's fire antlers" got no results for deer, reindeer, or moose, yet there were interesting anecdotes about cattle

Early Texas trail drivers, while herding the giant herds of Texas cattle over the historic trails of Texas, were sometimes treated during storms to a bizarre phenomena in which eerie luminous flashes of yellow-green tongues lightning-like fire arced from the horns of one steer to that of one nearby. Often this early day "laser show" continued until the entire herd was bathed in an incandescent glow. This phenomena, although a mystery to those old cowboys, is today most often associated with ships, masts and aircraft and is known as "St. Elmo's Fire."

If the reindeer were hooked up like those cows are said to have been, maybe that would help explain the massive death toll of the Norway bolt.
posted by jamjam at 12:19 PM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm sure I've written about this previously on Metafilter, but a physics professor said in class that lightning rods make a hissing, crackling noise during a storm and that we should check it out. So, next thunderstorm I went on top of the 3-story science building at my university. There was no noise. A lightning bolt struck the top of the building very near me and I was knocked down and was possibly unconscious for a few seconds. I am unlikely to try this again although I can't rule it out.
posted by neuron at 2:21 PM on August 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

My mom would tell of the time ball lightening came out of the mouthpiece of their telephone (the old-timey type with the earpiece hooked to the side), floated around the room a bit, then exploded.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:32 PM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

I was at a scouting jamboree held on a grassy hilltop when a thunderstorm rolled in. I don’t remember any nearby lightning strikes but everyone’s hair was literally standing on end from the static charge. I think I laid flat on the ground as there was no shelter to be had.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:37 PM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

The paper settles on a global rate of 6 deaths per million per year from lightning, with a rate of .3 per million in modern or urbanized areas.

So that would mean NYC, a city of ~9M people, would suffer about 2.7 lightning-related fatalities per year. On the one hand, that sounds small — what is 2 or 3 people in a city of 9M?

On the other hand … hey wait a minute, you’re telling me 2 or 3 people die of lightning strike? Every year? In NYC??? Why haven’t I heard about this? Probably because I don’t read The Post, I guess.

At the same time, I’m sure that many, many more people die every year doing normal boring shit I do all the time, like crossing the street or buying food from a vending machine or whatever. So I guess I’m not going to worry. Not gonna stop going to the beach just because a couple a sharks showed up.

But I personally love thunderstorms. Grew up in the Midwest where we’d regularly have thunder so loud it would shake the house. Rain would pour down so hard you’d have to pull your car over because you couldn’t see past the windshield. We don’t really have thunderstorms like that in NYC. Not real ones, anyway.
posted by panama joe at 7:29 AM on August 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

So that would mean NYC, a city of ~9M people, would suffer about 2.7 lightning-related fatalities per year.

Only if you read it in the most uncharitable way and thought for some reason that lightning deaths were evenly spread geographically.
posted by Nelson at 7:31 AM on August 20, 2022

Yeah, if I read the report right, I think the .3 per million is for the U.S. as a whole, so I’d imagine it’s much lower for NYC, balanced out by rural areas. I don’t think that’s quite how I worded it though.
posted by skewed at 9:36 AM on August 20, 2022

Right, I was referring to the “.3 per million for modern or urbanized areas” statistic. NYC being an urbanized area.

Although I suppose “modern” is in the eye of the beholder.
posted by panama joe at 10:06 AM on August 20, 2022

Here are some stats about lightning and latitude, and they are far more lopsided than I ever would have guessed:

We examine the increase of global lightning occurrence at high latitudes using the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) data over the last 16 years. While the fractional occurrence of lightning above 65 degrees latitude is on the order of just 0.1% of total lightning strokes (for instance, just 2.9x10^5 strokes out of 2.2x10^8 globally located strokes in 2019 by WWLLN) this leaves a statistically significant high latitude data set in every year with which to examine the trends compared to time, longitude and global temperature. We find consistent fractional increases in annual lightning occurrence rate in every 5 degree latitudinal ring from 55 degrees North to 85 North. Indeed, anecdotal reports of high latitude and even near polar lightning, as well as the rapid temperature rise at high latitudes are all consistent with the fractional relative stroke rate increase found in this study.

Lightning above 65° is only 0.1% of the total!

Positive and negative lightning

Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning is either positive or negative, as defined by the direction of the conventional electric current between cloud and ground. Most CG lightning is negative, meaning that a negative charge is transferred to ground and electrons travel downward along the lightning channel (conventionally the current flows from the ground to the cloud). The reverse happens in a positive CG flash, where electrons travel upward along the lightning channel and a positive charge is transferred to the ground (conventionally the current flows from the cloud to the ground). Positive lightning is less common than negative lightning, and on average makes up less than 5% of all lightning strikes.[64]


A bolt from the blue lightning strike which appears to initiate from the clear, but the turbulent sky above the anvil cloud and drive a bolt of plasma through the cloud directly to the ground. They are commonly referred to as positive flashes, despite the fact that they are usually negative in polarity.

There are six different mechanisms theorized to result in the formation of positive lightning.[65]

*Vertical wind shear displacing the upper positive charge region of a thundercloud, exposing it to the ground below.

*The loss of lower charge regions in the dissipating stage of a thunderstorm, leaving the primary positive charge region.

*A complex arrangement of charge regions in a thundercloud, effectively resulting in an inverted dipole or inverted tripole in which the main negative charge region is above the main positive charge region instead of beneath it.

*An unusually large lower positive charge region in the thundercloud.

*Cutoff of an extended negative leader from its origin which creates a new bidirectional leader in which the positive end strikes the ground, commonly seen in anvil-crawler spider flashes.
The initiation of a downward positive branch from an IC lightning flash.

*Contrary to popular belief, positive lightning flashes do not necessarily originate from the anvil or the upper positive charge region and strike a rain-free area outside of the thunderstorm. This belief is based on the outdated idea that lightning leaders are unipolar and originate from their respective charge region.[citation needed]

Positive lightning strikes tend to be much more intense than their negative counterparts. An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amperes (30 kA), and transfers 15 C (coulombs) of electric charge and 1 gigajoule of energy. Large bolts of positive lightning can carry up to 120 kA and 350 C.[66] The average positive ground flash has roughly double the peak current of a typical negative flash, and can produce peak currents up to 400 kA and charges of several hundred coulombs.[67][68] Furthermore, positive ground flashes with high peak currents are commonly followed by long continuing currents, a correlation not seen in negative ground flashes.[69]

As a result of their greater power, positive lightning strikes are considerably more dangerous than negative strikes. Positive lightning produces both higher peak currents and longer continuing currents, making them capable of heating surfaces to much higher levels which increases the likelihood of a fire being ignited. The long distances positive lightning can propagate through clear air explains why they are known as "bolts from the blue", giving no warning to observers.

Despite the popular misconception that these[clarification needed] are positive lightning strikes due to them seemingly originating from the positive charge region, observations have shown that these are in fact negative flashes. They begin as IC flashes within the cloud, the negative leader then exits the cloud from the positive charge region before propagating through clear air and striking the ground some distance away.[70][71]

Positive lightning has also been shown to trigger the occurrence of upward lightning flashes from the tops of tall structures and is largely responsible for the initiation of sprites several tens of km above ground level. Positive lightning tends to occur more frequently in winter storms, as with thundersnow, during intense tornadoes[72] and in the dissipation stage of a thunderstorm.[73] Huge quantities of extremely low frequency (ELF) and very low frequency (VLF) radio waves are also generated.[74]

It seems reasonable to guess that a lightning strike which killed 343 reindeer was positive lightning.
posted by jamjam at 4:50 PM on August 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

That is positively enlightening information :)
posted by cynical pinnacle at 10:06 AM on August 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't talk on landlines during thunderstorms because I read Tintin at an impressionable age.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:44 AM on August 22, 2022 [1 favorite]