Lightning

you almost got pwned, would have been a human bbq. Never had anything like that happen, but i would say a bolt was going to materialize there but did not have enough energy to fully materialize, instead, it just dissipated through you and the surronding area. Next time be sure to fly a metal kite as well, really, you should not be scrambling up cliffs during a lightning storm that was right on top of you! Be safe out there.

I know it was monumentally retarded, but I was in one of those positions where up was the only course.

Jack

If it didn't seriously hurt, i would say your organs are fine. If it was bad enough to fry your organs like sizzling delicious bacon, you would have felt it. I would say your fine.

I've read about lightning danger and it is my top worry when I'm in the backcountry because I don't really understand what I could possibly do if I am stuck on a high open area with a few trees..

what you describe sounds very similar to some dreams / nightmares I've had about being stuck in such a place during a lightning storm :)

Never come close to such an event though.. not sure I've even been camping during a thunderstorm.

I was wearing an Icebreaker 150 1/4 Zip Short Sleeve shirt, nylon pants, and a silnylon Zpack Zilch. Clouds were dancing on top of us.

Wool++Nylon++ChargedAtmosphere++Nearby(overhead?)lightning == LargeStaticShock?

The more I dig, the more I find that even the experts don't know as much as they'd like!

Jack

If you are on a mountaintop and the storm cloud is high above you, then the lightning bolt connects the cloud to the earth or vice versa, and there is an instantaneous voltage discharge. Typically you will find tens of thousands of volts in the discharge. After it is over, you may find black burned spots where the discharge happened, and it can burn or destroy whole trees. It can easily kill a human.

Sometimes, the storm cloud is low, almost like fog on the earth. Quite often, there are many little points for the electric discharge to happen through. So, instead of one big CRACK! you get little effects which we call static discharges and St. Elmo's Fire. You might feel your hair standing on end. You might see brief flashes of light inside a tent. The electrical voltage difference gets bled off in tiny bits instead of the one deadly bolt.

(This was from the Department of Been There, Done That.)

–B.G.–

You were probably not struck my lightning, but were in an area of moving positively charged particles that move with the thunderstorm (as far as hair standing on end).

Lightning can travel along the ground and have an effect on a person too. I can't explain why you thought a bolt was five miles away but felt something. Just doubt you were struck though.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/science.htm

"How Lightning Develops Between The Cloud And The Ground

A moving thunderstorm gathers another pool of positively charged particles along the ground that travel with the storm. As the differences in charges continue to increase, positively charged particles rise up taller objects such as trees, houses, and telephone poles. Have you ever been under a storm and had your hair stand up? Yes, the particles also can move up you! This is one of nature's warning signs that says you are in the wrong place, and you may be a lightning target!

The negatively charged area in the storm will send out a charge toward the ground called a stepped leader. It is invisible to the human eye, and moves in steps in less than a second toward the ground. When it gets close to the ground, it is attracted by all these positively charged objects, and a channel develops. You see the electrical transfer in this channel as lightning. There may be several return strokes of electricity within the established channel that you will see as flickering lightning. "

way better answer above.

I was skiing up Lassen Peak in Northern California and one buddy was along. We got to a point about 100 meters vertically below the summit where we paused for a breather. We were on the opposite side of the mountain from where the storm was approaching, so we couldn't see it. The electrical cloud cleared the peak and then surrounded us. I looked up at my friend, and his blond hair was standing up on end, and he had this strange look on his face. He could feel the electricity in the air, but of course we could not see anything. I had my parka hood up, and all of a sudden an electrical discharge went off inside the hood. It sounded like buzzing bees for a second, and then it was gone. We knew that we stood a chance of getting struck by a lightning bolt, so we instantly laid down flat on the snow. Right then, a strike of ball lightning occurred about 300 meters away. After a minute, we could feel the tension in the air had gone, and then it started snowing like crazy. Despite the fact that we were so close to the summit, we bailed. We skied down the mountain and back to our camp before we became Crispy Critters.

–B.G.–

I think Bob nailed it with his theory about St. Elmo's Fire.

You'd know if if you'd gotten hit.

Just to give a sense of scale, think about how good an insulator air is. Now imagine the same insulator only 10,000 feet thick. And now imagine how much power you need to punch through that much of that good an insulator.

(And people think that rubber tires are what makes cars save to be inside during thunderstorms….)

I was leading a group of climbers up Mount Shasta, and we stopped halfway up the mountain to camp overnight in the snow. I could see a storm front approaching from the west, so I told everybody to get in their tents and hunker down. A little while later, we were laying there quietly, not asleep. Suddenly it seemed as though somebody had turned on a fluorescent light inside the tent. It flickered for a second and then died. It did that three or four times. Needless to say, there was no fluorescent light. It was St. Elmo's Fire static discharge, and it was dancing off the various metal tent parts and ice axes. It's kind of scary until you think about it. We were actually in the middle of the electrical cloud, so the static was bleeding off any conductive object.
–B.G.–

You should buy a lottery ticket.

Long time ago I was climbing up the trail to Half Dome with friends. A thunderstorm was approaching. Our hair stood on end. It was scary. I don't remember feeling anything else like you described, but apparently just being near a thunderstorm can cause what you experienced without actually having to be struck.

Hi Bob

> Typically you will find tens of thousands of volts in the discharge.

Could be a LOT more than that! Cloud to ground gradients of over 1 million volts are not unrealistic. Otherwise, yeah, all sort of effects such as St Elmo's Fire. You got it.

Cheers

Jack,
If it were me, I'd say a few "thank-you's" to the Almighty, and humbly walk away from an event most people will never get to experience. Or, experience and live to tell about it. Must have been quite the moment. I'm actually jealous…..sort of.

"I know it was monumentally retarded, but I was in one of those positions where up was the only course."

Your high retard quotient was being there when you should know better.

Hike smart. We'd rather have your posts here than hear your story on the evening news.

Rule of thumb: Clear skies, go up. Thunder and lightning, go down.

I have been within 60 feet of a strike. I had the same feeling. Hair standing up, not from fear but from charged atmosphere. What I noticed just before the strike was a very high pitched ringing sound, almost out of my hearing range. Then, POW! The strike hit a transformer not 60 feet away. The air was highly ionized after this and gave a feeling much to your description.

I think you were not hit but may have received some of the voltage cast off from a near by strike.

"I think you were not hit but may have received some of the voltage cast off from a near by strike."

Voltage is a measurement of electric potential difference, similar to the slope of a hill or the hydrostatic head of a hydroelectric power plant. The current is what flows across the potential difference, like water crashing down a cascade. The voltage is what makes it do that.

That potential difference comes mostly from the static electric charge that the clouds create by bouncing particles together. Because clouds are enormous, i.e. mountain-sized (not the puny east coast mountains, I mean Real Mountains ™ like Tohoma and Kulshan), they can easily gather up a tremendously large charge. As it builds, it also affects the ground below it, because of the opposites attract thing.

So at the ground, if you're in the area where the opposite charge is building, and you're sticking out from the ground (which means that you're a conduit for the charge to get slightly closer to its opposite in the clouds above, since that reduces potential energy), you might well acquire a sizable electric field yourself, which is what causes St. Elmo's Fire.

That's part of what you experienced. The bolt ionizes the air it passes through, and turns it into plasma more or less instantly, leading to an audible shockwave (the thunder). You probably felt that ionized air washing over you.

In case you haven't guessed, I was the science geek at my high school AND college :)

"In case you haven't guessed, I was the science geek at my high school AND college :)"

Rakesh, didn't we go to different schools together?

I think an earlier poster meant Lightning, and not Lightening.

–B.G.–

With all due respect to lightning safety, I would say you are lucky to have experienced such a cool thing – though I doubt Ill try it myself

It sounds like you experienced something similiar to what Bob has described. You were probably surrounded by a charged cloud which was in the process of dissipating its charge to ground. The charge would have (to some extent) accumulated on you as it travels thru you to ground. This would make all your hair stand up and your skin tingle.
As far as feeling a lightning bolt w/ all of your being…idk…maybe you were all psyched out by the prior events, a little on edge &….

Bob, I wouldn't be surprised if we did. I know I'm not the ONLY science geek around here. (I'm not really a geek anymore… I just play one on TV to pay the bills. :))

Rakesh…….. thanks for the science lesson. I know 2 things about electricity, it hurts and it makes my computer go.

Just kidding, I'm a nerd too. Mostly in the way of databases and computer software where calculating volts, amps, and ohms are not required.

No problem… I've been working in software for far too long myself, but I started out with a biophysics degree. :)

Just read this earlier this morning. A woman was killed by lightning on the AT on top of Max Patch.
http://www.mtsanjacinto.info/viewtopic.php?t=2303

My wife and I were doing a six day Mt. Baker Mountaineering school in Washington state. On the sixth day, summit day, our group of nine had summited and were on our way down to base camp to pack it up and head down for pizza and liquid refreshments when about three miles off thunder claps and lightning materialized. Our guide became increasingly concerned and the pace hastened. My ice axe and crampons began to buzz and I heard that exact same vibration in the air you mentioned. Luckily for our group the storm moved off in the opposite direction as fast as it came up the side of Baker, it sort of skirted our position. I am not sure how close it actually was to our physical location on the mountain but when my ice axe started to vibrate, I figured that was close enough.

Not a nice experience for sure…yours sounds worse. Being helplessly exposed with nowhere to go is not a good feeling. As in our case, you can follow the book and still get caught in a spot.

The Sierra is another spot watching the barometer and cloud build up can really pay off. There is a definite cycle the clouds go through—not exactly predictable but with practice you can leave some distance between you and bad weather. Or at least be in a good location to ride it out. I have seen it go from cloudy, to darker, to dark, to thunder/lighting/hail in less than an hour.

Glad you are still upright and posting my friend.

couch