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Lightning: Top 10 Interesting Facts You Need to Know

If you are interested in lightning, you may have wondered about the most interesting facts about this extraordinary phenomenon. We will go through the Top 10 interesting and surprising facts.

1) Can lightning strike out of a blue sky? Yes, almost.

 

Some lightning bolts can appear to hit from a clear blue sky. A “Bolt from the Blue” is a cloud-to-ground lightning bolt that comes from the side of the thunderstorm cloud and travels through clear air away from the storm, eventually striking the ground.

They can strike tens of kilometers from the thunderstorm under the clear, blue sky, hence the name.

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Positive lightning strike (bolt from the blue) over the Gulf of Trieste. Photo: Marko Korošec.

While most bolts from the blue hit within several tens of kilometers of the thunderstorms, they can reach much further out. A bolt from the blue struck 74 km (46 miles) ahead of an advancing squall line near Ponca City, Oklahoma, on June 25, 2018.

Not feeling very safe? How about this? The longest lightning bolt was detected in Oklahoma on June 20, 2007. Remote lightning sensors detected a bolt that covered a horizontal distance of 321 km (199.5 miles).

The bolt propagated from the main storm updraft along the stratiform anvil region of the storm (anvil crawler). Along the way, the lightning bolt produced 13 cloud-to-ground strikes. While technically not a bolt from the blue, the distance from the main thunderstorm updraft makes this a record-setting event.

2) The most time a single person was hit by lightning – 7 times!

 

United States park ranger Roy Cleveland Sullivan was hit by lightning 7 times. He was first struck in 1942 at age 30 and the last time in 1977 at age 65. He survived all seven strikes, earning him the nicknames “Human Lightning Conductor” and “Human Lightning Rod.”

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Roy Sullivan: Human Lightning Conductor

All seven strikes were documented by the superintendent of Shenandoah National Park, R. Taylor Hoskins. He was not, however, present during any of the seven reported events.

It is implausible that Mr. Sullivan was hit directly 7 times; instead, at least some of the hits were indirect.

3) The place with the most lightning in the world – Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela

 

The place with the most lightning in the world is above the Catatumbo River, feeding into Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. Up to nearly 150-300 lightning days per year, 30 lightning flashes per minute, and 233 lightning flashes per square kilometer per year.

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Comparison of lightning flash rate for Lake Maracaibo and Lake Victoria, the previous record holder for the highest lightning rate in the world. Units are in lightning flashes per square kilometer per year—map by the University of São Paulo.

4) Central Florida, USA, gets so much lightning it is dubbed “Lightning Alley”

 

The area from Tampa to Orlando and Tampa to Titusville, Florida, gets so much lightning activity it has been dubbed “Lightning Alley.” According to various sources, the area receives approximately 10 and 35 lightning flashes per square kilometer yearly.

5) The place with the most lightning in Europe is northeastern Italy

 

Europe gets its fair share of lightning, particularly during the summer months. However, the place with the most lightning is the Friuli region in northeast Italy, which has over 50 days of lightning per year. According to analyses, thunderstorm frequency in this area is increasing.

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Big lightning barrage over the north Adriatic on September 24, 2017. Photo: Marko Korošec.

6) In 1769, lightning struck the Church of St. Nazaire in Brescia, North Italy, igniting 90 tonnes of gunpowder.

 

This event, also known as the Brescia explosion, happened in August 1769. A lightning bolt struck the Bastion of San Nazaro, where the Republic of Venice stored no less than 90,000 kg of gunpowder. The massive explosion hurled large stones up to a kilometer from the site, hitting buildings and people.

City gates were blown open, and so were the doors of houses and shops. Reports indicate about a sixth of the city was destroyed, and possibly up to 3000 people died in the blast, although an official account reports 400 fatalities and 800 injuries.

Result: the Roman Catholic Church renounced its objection to protecting property using lightning rods.

7) There are lightning super bolts

 
Lightning super bolts are loosely defined as 100 times more intense than average lightning. About 1 in 1000 lightning bolts exceeds an (optical) power of 100 GW, and about five flashes in a hundred million exceed an optical power of 3000 GW.

Lightning superbolts are so bright and powerful that they were first detected by the Vela satellites in the 1970s. Vela satellites’ primary purpose was to watch the globe for nuclear explosions. Lightning super bolts were bright enough to register on satellite sensors to detect nuclear blasts.

On May 31, 2012, a superbolt in Tulsa, Oklahoma, rattled the town with earthquake-like shaking. Car alarms were set off almost a kilometer from the strike, and picture frames fell off the walls! A super bolt in Illinois reportedly has broken windows, shook houses, and produced a 2-m wide and 30-cm deep crater at the strike point.

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Intense CG lightning bolts off Rovinj, NW Croatia, on September 19, 2017. Photo: Marko Korošec.

8) The electric field from an approaching thunderstorm can make your hair stand on end

 

Hair standing on end is a bone-chilling precursor to a nearby lightning strike. Remember those experiments in school where you rubbed a plastic rod against a cloth, held it too close to your head, and your hair stood on end?

Charge separation occurs when you rub the balloon against your sweater: electrons are transferred to the balloon. The sweater and the balloon acquire static charge, the balloon positive, and your sweater negative. When you move the balloon to your hair, its negative charge induces a positive charge, making it stand on end.

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Bolt from the blue from the updraft tower on a storm in central Slovenia on July 21, 2016. Photo: Marko Korošec.

A similar process happens in thunderstorms. Lightning flashes are static electricity discharges within a compelling electric field generated by thunderstorms. Charge separation occurs within a thunderstorm, generally producing a negative charge in the lower part of the cloud and a positive charge in the upper part of the storm, producing a powerful electric field.

A charge is also induced on the ground, producing a powerful electric field between the cloud and the ground. A lightning flash happens when the electric field becomes powerful enough – reaching breakdown voltage.

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Lightning barrage over the Trieste Gulf, Italy, on August 20th, 2014. Photo: Marko Korošec.

Your hair standing on end is a clear sign of a powerful electric field; the more your hair strands, the stronger the field. Strong enough for lightning to strike somewhere close. There have been recorded instances of people with hair standing on end being photographed just before a lightning strike.

*** Note: You are in danger if your hair stands on end during a thunderstorm! ***

9) The most extended continual lightning flash

 

You have probably seen lightning bolts that last longer than usual, perhaps a second or two. And think that was long. The longest reported duration of a continual lightning flash was nearly 8 seconds! A lightning flash in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in southern France in 2012 lasted 7.74 seconds. Take a stopwatch and measure that – imagine a lightning bolt persists for so long! In comparison, the average duration of a lightning flash is 0.2 seconds.

10) Better odds than the lottery

 

Your odds of being hit by lightning are better than winning the lottery. Of course, your odds depend significantly on your location; you are reasonably safe from lightning if you live in the Arctic Circle.

In places with more lightning, it is a different matter. In the U.S., the National Weather Service estimates the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is approximately 1 : 15,300. About 10% of lightning strikes result in death, but as much as 70% leave permanent effects.

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