Shocking Facts About Lightning

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work.” Mark Twain

Many of us have heard “when thunder roars, go indoors,” do you know that is because thunder can be heard up to 10 miles away from a lightning strike? It is relatively simple to figure out how far away lightning is from you: just count the seconds in between a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder, then divide that number by five (5). So, if you see lightning, start counting (use a stopwatch or count by saying 1-Mississippi, 2-Mississippi, etc…until you hear thunder. If it is 10 seconds, divide 10 by five (10/5) and you will know that the strike is 2 miles away from you! Knowing how far lightning is away from you is very important and can help save your life.

While the typical lightning strike is only three to four miles in length, the longest, single lightning flash was recorded in Brazil on October 31, 2018 and was nearly 435 miles long, which shattered Oklahoma’s 2007 record of 199.5 miles. Just how long is 435 miles? Well…if you started from the most northern point of the Outer Banks, drove to the southernmost point, then went all the way back to where you started, you would still have 35 miles to go. But if you were able to travel like lightning, at 270,000 miles per hour, you would be able to do the trip in a few seconds.

Most of us know that there is no thunder without lightning, but do you know that, in an average year, almost every city in North Carolina records over 2000 lightning strikes? Florida is considered the lightning capital of the U.S., but Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela experiences the most thunderstorms in the world, averaging 140-160 storm nights per year. These storms can last up to 10 hours at a time and average 28 lightning strikes per minute—that is 40,000 strikes in one night!  Every year, there are approximately, 1,400,000,000 (1.4 billion!) lightning strikes—that is 44 strikes per second!

A fun website to learn about and watch real time lightning strikes is www.lightningmaps.org. The site allows you to zoom in on an area anywhere in the world and see a heat map of the current lightning maps.

Lightning strikes may look wide in pictures or even in real life, but they are only 2-3 cm or about the width of your thumb. While that is not very wide, lightning strikes are full of energy! The average cloud to ground strike contains roughly five billion joules of energy. That is enough energy to power an average household for a month. You are able to see and feel the effects of lightning hitting the earth through a phenomenon called fulgurite where the intense heat melts and fuses the quartz sand.

While lightning is extremely dangerous, it is not usually deadly as most people who are struck by lightning live but may have severe complications for the rest of their lives. According to the National Weather Service, in the U.S. from 1989-2018, an average of 43 people were killed each year. In the last 14 years, only two people have died from being struck by lightning while on the Outer Banks. In the U.S., the chances of getting struck by lightning is one in 700,000.

What do you do if you are caught outside in a thunderstorm? Get inside as quickly and safely as possible. That may be a building or a vehicle but try not to touch anything metal. Lightning will strike the tallest object but that does not mean that you are safe by crouching or laying on the ground. Keep in mind, that when you are on the beach or on the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge, you are very likely the tallest object in the area. Even though fulminology is the study of lightning and astraphobia is the fear of lightning, there is no single term attributed with someone surviving a lightning strike. I guess we can just say that those people have a shocking story to tell.

Written by Tonya Michael & Ranger Jennifer Cox

Photo by Forrest Moreland, Tropical Storm Javier rolling in Destin, FL