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Lightning Back to Canoeing Library
Lighting is a huge electric spark that can occur between the clouds and the earth, between two clouds, or within the same cloud. Lightning's strong electrical current heats and causes a sudden expansion of air, which produces a sound wave - the boom of thunder.
How Does it Happen?
Electric potential builds up in a cloud in somewhat the same manner your body picks up an electric charge when scuffing your feet on a carpet. The friction of scuffing creates an electric potential or charge. Your body retains the negative charge, which will ground itself with a stinging zap when you touch a doorknob for example.
How Do I Know When a Thunder Storm is Approaching?
Light waves travel much faster than sound waves. The flash of lightning is for all practical purposes seen instantaneously. The boom of thunder arrives later, covering 1100 feet per second, or roughly 1 mile in 5 seconds. By counting "one, one thousand, and two etc.," the distance from you to the lightning can be estimated. Every five seconds between lightning and thunder equals about one mile of distance between you and the storm.
Minimizing Danger on Land
- Time visits to high risk areas with weather patterns
- Find safer terrain if you hear thunder
- Avoid trees, peaks, ridges, wide open ground, high ground, water, cave entrances
- Avoid long conductors (metal structures, wire cables, railway tracks)
- Get in the lightning position (keep a low profile by squatting on your folded ensolite or sleeping pad)
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