⚡️During a thunderstorm - standing under a tree is literally the WORST place to be.
— NWS (@NWS) May 16, 2018
⚡️During a thunderstorm - even sitting in a parked car under a tree is dangerous due to falling limbs from lightning and wind.
⚡️Imagine how many people don't know this?#WeatherReady pic.twitter.com/S0FIR16oer
May 17, 2018
The worst place to be.
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I was in Tucson about ten years ago during a monsoon storm.
Lightning hit a tree about a foot in diameter near my house and it snapped the tree off about a foot above the ground.
The chances are still negligible anything near you will get hit. This is click bait disaster porn.
We have a wonderful wing of Cuban thunderstorms coming across The Southwest Florida (The SWF) this week. Night before last it was loud enough to rattle the double pane glass in my house, and the next morning I drove by a 2ft diameter palm tree that was exploded across the sidewalk and street.
It was the most impressive storm I've sat though except for all the ones where I was in a tent.
-XC
Well, anyone who was awake during middle school science class knows it.
You'd have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being struck by lightning.
Althouse.
Come for the political commentary.
Stay for the weather advice.
All golfers know this. It is Golf 101 that we are to lie flat in the fairway away from our bag of clubs and cart. The rubber tired vehicle being protection is nonsense. The lightening usually strikes a taller object in the area and bounces around from there.
I thought the worst place to be in a thunderstorm was:
Out in the middle of the lake in a boat; or
Out in the middle of a Golf course.
Of course, that brings up Lee Trevino's joke that if you're caught in a thunderstorm, just grab a 1-iron, because "only God can hit a 1-iron".
Trees are dangerous. And not just in Thunderstorms. I had a friend who went to ER after being hit on the head by a Pine cone!
How's that for being unlucky? But the Pine cone weighted 1/2 a lbs. and probably fell from 20-30 feet up.
Ever eat a pine cone? Maybe parts are edible. And dangerous.
I would think the literally worst place you can be is holding onto a tall steel pole in the middle of an open field.
Fake news. Haven't all of us stood under trees during storms. We're all still here aren't we? Is this advice from the government. I suppose I need a permit to stand under a tree now.
"All golfers know this. "
Lee Trevino says he holds up a 1 iron. "Not even God can hit a 1 iron."
Where else are you supposed to park if not in the parking lot?
"I had a friend who went to ER after being hit on the head by a Pine cone!"
I had a house at Lake Arrowhead years ago. There was a huge sugar pine right next to the parking space. In the spring, I had to park on the street, The squirrels would gnaw the pine cone stems and they would drop like a bomb. They were as much as two feet long.
The worst place to be in a thunder storm is a hospital room dying of cancer.
Knowing it intellectually is one thing. Actually deciding to lie down in a low spot during a downpour is something else. When in law school (old enough to know better) another student and I took shelter under a tree when a thunderstorm broke out while we were canoeing. Lightning struck a similar tree across the river from us. We scurried out and lay down in the mud and running water.
When I lived in CT, a tree in my back yard got hit by lightening while I was eating dinner. There is nothing like hearing a tree explode to cause you to crap your pants. The bolt literally split the tree right down the middle.
"The chances are still negligible anything near you will get hit. "
and yet, people keep buying lottery tickets
"The worst place to be in a thunder storm is a hospital room dying of cancer."
No, the worst place, is sitting at a bar listening to a certain Ex-presidential candidate complain that America is too sexist to elect a woman president.
A friend of mine was part of a marching band that got hit and he grew four inches taller in like a month after. Though he said everything he ate tasted burnt.
Ever eat a pine cone? Maybe parts are edible.
I remember Euell Gibbons.
What, in that video, made being in a car bad? I will stipulate that if the choice is, "Being inside a concrete block building, or being in a Chevy pickup truck, I will select the concrete block building. But if the choice is, "Standing in the open air far away from any lightning-attracting tall trees or metallic objects," or "Sitting inside a Chevy pickup truck," I'm takin' the Chevy pickup truck every time.
(I guess I have to acknowledge that the precise wording of the National Weather Service tweet is, "a parked car under a tree." So, okay. Get in the car; drive it away from any tall trees. Okay. But in the setting described by that video, if I am not in that building, I am in the Chevy pickup.)
I heard that getting hit by lightning gave you super powers and made you real smart. I've never been hit myself, so...
"I remember Euell Gibbons."
Thank you. Its amazing how those old TV commercials stick in my mind.
Talk about useless knowledge!
Hey Tradguy, no comment on it being a Catholic school?
My great aunt had lightning insurance on her trees. After she died, my grandmother bought the house (because they shared a driveway, tool shed, and 3 car garage) and canceled the insurance. A month or two later, a persimmon tree in the front yard was hit and had to be cut down. The fruit had made a mess of the sidewalk for decades, so no great loss.
Michael K said...
"All golfers know this. "
Lee Trevino says he holds up a 1 iron. "Not even God can hit a 1 iron."
It is an old joke, and Lee Buck was expert at stealing all the old jokes.
But remember; Lee (and Jerry Heard) were actually hit by lighting at the 1975 Western Open and nearly killed. I've been on a golf course with Lee when we heard distant thunder, and he didn't laugh or fool around.
Lee told that joke many times, but he claims that he told it the week before, at the U.S. Open at Medinah, in front of a large group of people when there was a weather warning. And that he somehow jinxed himself for the following week. He laughs about it now, but his back was very seriously -- permanently -- injured in the strike.
Check it out:
https://www.golfchannel.com/video/feherty-top-10-moments-countdown-trevino-human-lightning-rod/
All right-wingers deserve to be struck by lightening. We need a list of tips to ensure they are incinerated during a thunderstorm. They need tinfoil pussy hats to attract the electricity. They don't believe in Climate Change, so as a matter of divine retribution, they need a practical lesson in the power of nature. We can appease the thunder gods by sending the whole GOP headlong into the Kilauea volcano. There are so many thunder gods that it will take a lot of human sacrificial lambs to appease them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilauea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thunder_gods
"When it comes to making sacrifices to the Thunder Gods, make sure you don't get Xolotl mixed up with Axolotl, or especially the evil Xoloitzcuintli, or else 'twill all be for naught", he said, speaking from experience.
Trumpit said...All right-wingers deserve to be struck by lightening.
Only the POCs.
All right-wingers deserve to be struck by lightening. We need a list of tips to ensure they are incinerated during a thunderstorm.
Maybe you could build big ovens!
Talk about useless knowledge!
I can’t see a hickory tree without thinking of that guy.
SDaly said...Dullest short story plot ever.
Once we were hiking above timberline and a storm came in and I could sort-of feel my hair starting to stand up so we ran away.
How about that one?
The really worst place to be in a thunderstorm is in a zoo where the lions have gotten out of their enclosures as a result of a shootout between two different terrorist factions.
Also a really bad place to be in a thunderstorm is in a troop convoy that is being targeted by an A-10.
But maybe the worst place to be during a thunderstorm is in a pit filled with poisonous vipers and scorpions.
Or in a secluded monastery when vikings attacked, but that's really more of "a worst place in history to be during a thunderstorm."
Ralph L said...canceled the insurance...
You're playing with thunder when you cancel a regular sacrifice.
The worst place to be in a thunder storm is under a tree with Trumpit.
The worst place to be in a thunderstorm is the same as with any other instance- in a room with Chuck.
The worst place to be in a thunder storm is between Ritmo's ears.
⚡️ "My best guess about reality is that we’re a simulation." ⚡️
In that case it's OK to simulate standing under a simulated tree.
After extensive and exhausting research on both Althouse and Youtube, it is shockingly clear that we have a huge problem with lightning and with golf courses. and trees. Every post clearly indicates the involvement of trees. either in groups, or standing alone. the only sane solution is to cut down all the trees. pave over the golf courses. Problem solved. I find the same logic involved when the left talks about banning guns.
I didnt see any strong winds in that video, much less a Gael.
Come in she said. I'll give you shelter from the storm. Dylan knew a woman's love is what he needed.
Wouldn't being up in the tree on a branch be worse than being under it?
Also: LIGHTNING not LIGHTENING. (grumble)
During a thunderstorm - standing under a tree is literally the WORST place to be.
That's a figurative use of literally, even if it were the worst.
The most dangerous place to be during a thunderstorm in Washington is standing between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.
Well, literally the worst place to have been is where the lightening struck.
Helpful post. No helpful comment?
Awesome! I wish I coulda been there!
I thought being in a car (not a golf cart) was very safe in a thunderstorm. Now you do not want the car under a tree.
Anyway, the safety is not because of the rubber tires, it is because the metal frame acts as a faraday cage and the ligtning will hit the metal and not you.
"All right-wingers deserve to be struck by lightening."
Well, the Fascists are up early.
All right-wingers deserve to be struck by lightening.
Racist.
>>They don't believe in Climate Change
Nor Superman, or the Easter Bunny.
Judy always asks me to brush the swimming pool when she hears thunder. Fortunately the aluminum pole is shorter than a couple of the trees on our property, so I'm good, right?
>>so I'm good, right?
It might be a good time to check the brake lines on your car...
"I thought being in a car (not a golf cart) was very safe in a thunderstorm. "
Experts give the worst advice, sometimes. Meteorologists always say, or used to say, to get out of your car during a tornado and seek shelter in a ditch! Ridiculous! How could you possibly be safer being exposed to the elements at their worst. Wouldn't you rather be in a strong metal box, dry and out of the wind, and able, if necessary, to drive away from danger?
The Rothschild family wants you to know they control the weather. You aren't safe anywhere!
Experts give the worst advice, sometimes. Meteorologists always say, or used to say, to get out of your car during a tornado and seek shelter in a ditch! Ridiculous!
Hubs and my son were in the room when this advice was broadcast on the weather channel. My son asked his dad if this was true, should you get out of the car in that situation. My husband told him yes, get out and get in the ditch and then (pausing for effect and demonstrating) beeeend over...."
Son asked why you should bend over like that and hubs replied, "to kiss your arse goodbye."
My son still repeats thisstory whenever we're dealing with severe weather warnings and cracks up.
No, the worst place, is sitting at a bar listening to a certain Ex-presidential candidate complain that America is too sexist to elect a woman president.
Worse than that would be to be someplace where you can't get a drink.
I was in an aluminum rowboat with my brother and his 8 year old son when a vicious thunderstorm broke out. The mill pond (specifically the Grist Mill pond in Brewster, MA for those of you have been to Cape Cod) we were in isn't even a mile across, but we could barely make any headway against the wind. The bottom of the boat started to fill with water, so my brother told his son to get up on the middle seat. I grabbed the kid and puled him to my side and reminded my brother that we didn't need his kid being the highest point on the entire pond. We ended up ditching the boat far from our dock and walking through the woods and up a side-stream that was so swollen we had to carry the kid piggy-back, lightning crashing seemingly all around us. The next morning I had to swim across the pond to retrieve the boat, but I did get to fish on my way back, so not a total pain in the ass.
" I'm takin' the Chevy pickup truck every time."
But don't get out of it during the storm. A TV newslady was getting out of the truck when a mast antenna hit a powerline. Lost her leg.
Probably the worst place to be is on a mountain top. A group of climbers sheltered in a hut on a mountain top and several were killed when a lightning bolt hit the hut. They had decided to stay instead of hike down.
Tank was once swinging a 5 iron in the middle of a fairway in the middle of a thunderstorm when it occurred to him how incredibly stupid that was . Hit the clubhouse for a beer and let the storm pass. Resumed play for my lowest score ever. True story.
Here's a good, short lightning-strike compilation video. The first clip shows the danger from a falling tree.
Under a leaking gutter, or a gutterless roof-line.
Places in America where they have no electricity, and these bastards are running their street lights in broad daylight. Harrumph.
@ Tank
Tank was once swinging a 5 iron in the middle of a fairway in the middle of a thunderstorm when it occurred to him how incredibly stupid that was
You should have been using a 1 iron.....because.....not even God can hit a 1 iron :-)
The summer after fifth grade, my daughter's friend went to summer camp. He sheltered under a tree with the counselor and other kids during a thunderstorm, still holding the knife he'd been using to cut vegetables. He was hit by lightning and killed. He'd played Peter Rabbit in the school musical. My daughter was Mother Rabbit.
I love stuff like this! I hate Tweets or new stories about people struck by lightning, or taken away by a riptide, or attacked by a bear when the tweets don't contain any helpful information about what to do to avoid catastrophe.
Dullest short story plot ever.
Had to be there.
If the ditch was narrow and deep enough and you were prone, would the tornado still pick you up? It's likely to take the car and drop it on a bitch from the East.
Looks like those storm chaser idiots would run some experiments on tornado safety.
We live on a ridge and it can be exciting sometimes with storms and the very tall trees. The closest strike came a couple years ago. We were looking out and the view suddenly went white and then red with the simultaneous thunder leaving our ears ringing. Not quite sure where it hit. Didn't see the cats for a couple hours after that.
Meteorologists always say, or used to say, to get out of your car during a tornado and seek shelter in a ditch! Ridiculous! How could you possibly be safer being exposed to the elements at their worst. Wouldn't you rather be in a strong metal box, dry and out of the wind, and able, if necessary, to drive away from danger?
I'd rather not be surrounded by glass during a tornado, though as Pettifogger said, actually making the decision to leave the vehicle would be difficult. Lying flat on the ground makes everyone worry about something being dropped on them...and yet I believe that lying flat on the ground makes it much less likely that you would be picked up by the tornado. Pick your poison.
I hope never to have to test any of these theories.
So what if I lie underneath my car during a tornado.
That's sounds like a good compromise.
So what is the simultaneous puff of smoke at the right side of the frame? Is that the lightning moving through the ground to ignite something else? Is it another fork hitting the ground (although there's nothing visible)? Something from the bolt that hit that tree is acting, apparently through the ground, many yards away.
Say, have you heard this one, lately?
not even God can hit a 1 iron :-)
@ FullMoon
Ah...That's what I get for not reading all the comments. ;-)
The 1 iron is making a bit of a comeback this season on the PGA tour as technology has made them easier to hit. So if you’re going to wave one around make sure it’s an old one. God can probably hit the new stuff.
I use to love lightening storms when I was a kid: the wind, the rain, getting soaked, the incredible blasts of sound, the lightening itself.
Anyway I don't know how old I was, I may have been five or perhaps seven, and I was outside in a lightening storm, and perhaps I was outside because there was a lightening storm, and I was near a tree. I wasn't trying to avoid the rain. I was either running or walking somewhere else, and I wasn't looking at the tree, so what I saw I saw with my peripheral vision and therefore I'm not entirely for sure what I saw.
But what I thought I saw was light coat this huge branch, maybe a foot thick, where it was coming off the tree, and the branch broke at that spot and the rest of it fell. The sound was incredibly loud and it was simultaneous with the light. In addition to the light wrapping round the branch, just for a moment there was light everywhere.
As I remember it and to the extent I remember it, because I was very young, I think I was nine feet away.
Lightning travels from the ground up to the sky.
0_0 said...
Lightning travels from the ground up to the sky.
***************************
Except when it doesn't. The most spectacular lightning storm I ever saw,s in Washington DC, was of the cloud-to-cloud variety.
There's also intra-cloud, cloud-to-air and so-called "bolts from the blue" which are generated in storm clouds, travel horizontally for miles away from the storm and then descend to the ground.
Then there's sprite lightning .....
Trumpit said...
...right-wingers deserve to be struck by lightening (sic)....They don't believe in Climate Change, so as a matter of divine retribution, they need a practical lesson in the power of nature..
**************************
Au contraire. It's precisely because climate skeptics believe in the relatively puniness of human power versus the immense powers of Nature that they find no compelling evidence that there's anything unusual about today's climate, or that our consumption of fossil fuels have resulted in any changes to it.
The Earth has been both colder and warmer than today, during the last five hundred years, when the human population was much smaller and fossil fuel use was minuscule. Warmistas always seem to forget that.
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