MYTH: If it is not raining, then there is no danger from lightning. FACT: Lightning often strikes outside of heavy rain and may occur as far as 10 miles away from any rainfall.
MYTH: The rubber soles of shoes or rubber tires on a car will protect you from being struck by lightning. FACT: Rubber-soled shoes and rubber tires provide NO protection from lightning. However, the steel frame of a hard-topped vehicle provides increased protection if you are not touching metal. Although you may be injured if lightning strikes your car, you are much safer inside a vehicle than outside.
MYTH: People struck by lightning carry an electrical charge and should not be touched. FACT: Lightning-strike victims carry no electrical charge and should be attended to immediately. Contact your local American Red Cross chapter for information on CPR and first aid classes.
MYTH: "Heat lightning" occurs after very hot summer days and poses no threat. FACT: What is referred to as "heat lightning" is actually lightning from a thunderstorm too far away for thunder to be heard. However, the storm may be moving in your direction!
- Lightning bolts travel at speeds of up to 60,000 miles per second.
- A single lightning bolt travels through twisted paths in the air that can be as wide as one of your fingers or from six to ten miles.
- -A flash of lightning is brighter than 10,000,000 100-watt light bulbs.
- -A flash of lightning can pulse as much power as there is in all the power plants in the United States in that split second.
- -A flash of lightning could power a light bulb for a month.
- Trees sometimes can survive direct hits from lightning because the electricity passes over their wet surface and go into the ground.
- Florida is the lightning capital of the United States.
- 10% of all people struck by lightning were in Florida at the time.
- In March of 1991, a single six hour storm stretching over Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri caused more than 15,000 lightning strikes. During the storm the skies were blazed with almost constant lightning.
- Lightning can be made in a laboratory by an instrument called a Van de Graaff static electricity generator which could generate million of volts of artificial lightning from a metal sphere mounted at the top of an insulated column.
- About 71.4286% of all people struck by lightning still survive.
- Temperatures in the path of a lightning bolt can reach as high as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lightning is not confined to thunderstorms. It's been seen in volcanic eruptions,extremely intense forest fires, surface nuclear detonations, heavy snowstorms,and in large hurricanes.
- A lightning flash is no more than one inch wide.
- The temperature of a lightning flash is 15,000 to 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hotter than the surface of the sun (9,000 degrees Fahrenheit).
- A single lightning flash carries an electric current as high as 300,000 amperes. For comparison, electrical wiring in a house carries 20 or 30 amperes.
- What we see as a flash of lightning may actually be three or four different strokes in exactly the same place, one right after another. That's why lightning seems to flicker.
- Power failures caused by lightning strikes cost utility companies as much as $1 billion annually.
- The Guinness Book of World Records lists Roy Sullivan of Virginia as the human being struck by lightning the most times: seven. This is one record you don't want to beat!
