The Principle That Lightning Doesn't Strike Twice In The Same Place Is Flawed. How To Survive A Lightning Strike!

When we are children we are told many things by adults that we take on trust to be true. Lightning is dangerous.

Santa only leaves presents for good children.

The Tooth Fairy exists.

And fortunately Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot.

Santa and the Tooth Fairy are fine and still doing a great job but Imagine my shock then when I was at home in my garden in sunny Cape Town, South Africa. Not only did Lightning strike twice in the same place, it was right in front of me, and we caught it on camera.

My friend Neil was literally just telling me how dangerous lightning was and as he finished the sentence there was an almighty crack of thunder immediately followed by a bolt of lightning not 3 feet in front of him.

We jumped out of our skins and thought that it had struck about 20 feet away and were quite amazed that we had witnessed such an event so close.

Imagine how flabbergasted we were when we saw how close it really was. What is more when we watched the video back in slow motion; we saw that we had just probable escaped death or a fatal injury by pure luck.

On the video on slow playback you can clearly see " two red leaders/streamers" coming off of both Neil and myself.

The red leaders/streamers come up from surface artifacts (people and objects) and connect to the lightning bolt and give it a "pathway" to ground.

Many of the things we were told were not only untrue but in many cases completely wrong.

"Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place?" It does.

Or

"The chances of getting struck by lightning are low?" No its not.

A few facts about lightning.

" The discharge of atmospheric electricity, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F). Source Wikipedia

First things first. The odds of being struck in your lifetime (if you lived to be 80 years) are 1 in 3000.

That means you have less chance of winning the UK lottery, than getting struck by lightning.

The UK lottery estimates your chance of winning at, 14 million to 1 !?

You had better keep working then, as the lottery is not going to improve your finance's any time soon.

Do the math. OK I'll do it for you 14,000.000 / 3000 = 4666.66.

So you have 4,667 times more chances of getting struck by lightning than winning the UK lottery.

Lightning Tourism

People actually go on holiday to areas with high lightening activity. They really enjoy watching these storms. I do too!

'Around the world, lightning strikes the ground about 100 times each second, or 8 million times a day.

There are roughly 5 to 10 times as many cloud flashes as there are to cloud-to-ground flashes, so the total amount of lightning is quite a bit higher Noaa

The good news is you and I don't live in Valparaiso.(I assume) Apparently the most lightning struck area on the planet.

I hope this information helps you to decide to:-

(1) Stay indoors when lightning strikes.

(2) Do not stand under trees or use an umbrella in a lightning storm.

(3) If you get caught out in the open, try to crouch down close to the ground.

Finally If you are in a car you are generally safe. The body of a car acts just like a Faraday cage. Which will protect you from lightning.

Not much help if your car is a convertible. Good luck and keep safe.