Learning about lightning the hard way

by billso on Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Does any­one need a reminder about light­ning and elec­tronic equip­ment? It’s a bad idea to do the fol­low­ing while light­ning is in the vicin­ity, espe­cially if you are out­side and near tall trees;

  • Lis­ten to a radio
  • Lis­ten to an iPod
  • Use a per­sonal computer
  • Oper­ate a video recorder

The woman who shot this video was hit by light­ning — and it’s all on tape, includ­ing her scream. She lived:

From what i under­stand, it went through my left hand hold­ing the cam­era, crossed my back and exited out of my right hand hold­ing onto the metal rail­ing. No entry or exit wounds, as i was not directly struck, i got just a really good zap from one of the “fin­ger arcs” that hap­pen when light­ning hits.

See the com­ments and the video on Flickr (via Boing­Bo­ing and Laugh­ingSquid).

Share

Tagged as: electricity, lightning, safety, USA, video

  • http://dpeters1.myopenid.com Daniel Peters

    Ah, I recall see­ing this on Digg. There was quite a bit of dis­cus­sion as to whether or not she was actu­ally hit. Being close enough to feel the “leader,” or one of the weaker side paths that the light­ning bolt could have taken, is still quite an amaz­ing thing. Luck­ily, she wasn’t emit­ting a strong enough elec­tric field to attract the full brunt of the light­ning strike.

    I’m rather fond of thun­der and light­ning. Despite this, I’m well aware that we’re lucky here in Hawaii not to have much light­ning. It’s all to easy to for­get that it’s an actual danger.

    I won­der if there are any ongo­ing projects to har­ness light­ning? It would be nice if nat­u­rally occur­ring elec­tric­ity could charge my car some day in the future.

  • http://billso.com billso

    She got a glanc­ing blow.

    Hav­ing grown up in the light­ning cap­i­tal of the con­ti­nent, I enjoy a good thunderstorm.

Previous post:

Next post: