Lightning Safety for Sportsmen
Everyone remembers those childhood tales that lighting is caused by angels bowling, or a really unruly party in heaven. Usually the misinformation comes from a family member desperate to calm our fears during a particularly noisy or violent lightning storm.
The fable may be reassuring, but the unfortunate truth is that lighting can be a killer, especially to outdoorsmen. And in some cases–like these two victims–even if you do everything right, lightning can still find you.
The odds of being struck by lightning when hiking, camping, hunting or fishing are very low–in fact, much less than being killed in a car accident on the way to your outing. But, there are some things you can do to reduce your risk.
First and foremost, when a heavy storm cell with lightning approaches you do not want to be the highest point around. Standing on a hilltop may be suicidal in a storm as heavy as the one that swept through southern Arizona on that fateful day so many years ago.
Even though most lightning bolts never reach the Earth, they’re still looking for a quick and easy route to the ground. If you happen to be standing on a hilltop, and are the tallest object for hundreds of feet, any lightning considers you the shortest route to that ground. It may save it only five to six feet of traveling through the air, but thanks to our body’s water content, humans conduct electricity much more efficiently than air.
Avoid high ground. Get off hilltops, mountaintops, exposed outcroppings, and don’t decide to avoid the rain by standing under a sizeable tree…or even a little one for that matter. Remember, the tree is a lot taller than you are, and lightning would just love to transfer its energy by striking it. If you happen to be standing underneath when that happens, odds are very good you too will be struck.
Metal objects have a nasty habit of attracting lightning. This includes fishing rods that, though often made out of graphite or fiberglass, conduct electricity with much the same efficiency as copper wire. I know of one instance when an angler was fishing on San Carlos Lake in Arizona when a storm began approaching. Though it was still several miles away, and lightning wasn’t evident, the fishing rod had accumulated so much static electricity that the part of his line that remained above water after each cast was dancing wildly and snapping. He thought he had a particularly sneaky largemouth bass playing with him until he began hearing an eerie hissing in the air. Luckily he brought in his line and immediately headed into shore where he safely watch what he describes as one of the most powerful electrical storms he’s ever witnessed.
Put the fishing rod down, get rid of the camera, tripod, climbing gear, golf clubs, or anything metal the moment you hear an electrical storm approaching. Get away from the campsite flagpole, go to shore, find safe harbor, and wait out the storm. Don’t grab the cell phone to return a call–that antenna attracts radio signals, and lightning.
One of the best places you can be is in your vehicle. The rubber tires give it a different profile than the average metallic object, usually denying lightning a good solid ground if it passes through the vehicle. It can, however, envelop a car or RV as it travels toward the ground–precisely why anyone in a vehicle in a thunder storm should avoid touching metal.
A lot of people view caves as a safe haven. Nothing could be further from the truth. If lightning strikes above, it can travel through the ground, ultimately you. Taking harbor in a cave is a lot better than underneath a tree–but it’s not totally safe.
Get off the water, leave the golf course, and don’t stand on that football field or anywhere you’re the highest object around.
There are some clues that indicate a strike is imminent. If, during a thunderstorm, the hair on your arm begins to stand up, you hear a buzzing or popping in your ears, or smell something reminiscent of an electrical short, drop metal objects immediately, reduce your profile (squat, bend over or sit down), move from tall objects and, if possible, get out of the area immediately in a safe fashion. Many of these symptoms indicate a lightning strike is about to occur in your immediate area. Two-way radios that suddenly have their squelch go erratic, or regularly seem to pique are also a good indicator.
A friend of mine, while fishing in Alabama, had one of his fillings begin to throb. With the approaching storm he headed to shore, but couldn’t help but wonder why in the world his tooth was bothering him so much.
Then as he beached his bass boat, he saw the hair on his arms was standing straight up. Only a second later, as he ran from the water, lightning struck a tree right over his boat. His tooth stopped throbbing immediately–he theorized the static electricity that had built up in the metal filling dissipated with the strike.
I was on the other side of the lake, and it was one of the most powerful storms I’ve ever battled while on assignment at a bass tournament. The professional angler I was writing a story about couldn’t even see the shore once it hit, so we bobbed in the water helplessly for 30 minutes–with blinding bolts flashing all around.
For more than a decade I was part of the Mountain Rescue Association unit in southern Arizona. The area’s dry desert air and fast-moving monsoons provided some of the most spectacular light shows on Earth. Unfortunately, we were carrying caribiners, radios, hauling victims in an all-metal stokes and, more often than not, sitting on exposed cliffs, dropping into caves and ignoring the noise as we climbed to a peak, hoping to catch a glimpse of a lost hiker.
I had two close calls, but I lived through what I consider my most exposed years. So did all of those dedicated souls at my side.
Lightning is just one of those natural forces that demands respect. It’s extremely powerful, nearly impossible to predict, and yet it remains one of those wonderful spectacles we all enjoy from a distance, or talk about for years over subsequent campfires if we survive the storm.
