Lightning above treeline while in a tent

[Todd T]

My opinion(s):

The best thing to do is be somewhere else.  Your best bet is to plan carefully based on the forecast and the typical daily patterns.  However, in my experience, if you get surprised by a lightning storm, there is rarely much chance of moving to a safer place, so…

The next best thing you can do is minimize your footprint.  More lightning deaths are caused by ground currents than anything else, so you don’t want to make yourself a good path for the electricity to follow.  The difference between standing with your feet touching and standing with your feet 2 ft apart is enough to kill you.  Lying down is far worse.  Best to squat with feet touching and nothing else on your body touching the ground until the storm passes.

As for finding the safest place amongst various tree options, I’m not convinced lightning’s “highest tree” preference is very strong.  If it were, we’d always see lighting marks on the tallest trees, and we don’t.  Most struck trees I’ve seen were average size in the middle of a bunch of other trees.  So again…assume the position.

[AK Granola]

Who can squat for 3 hours during a thunderstorm? I’ll try to avoid, but I have to hike. In some places there’s lightning every single day. If it gets me it gets me. I’m still more likely to die of a shooting here in the good ol’ USA.

2020 – 19,384 murders with guns in Murica

2020 – 17 deaths by lightning in Murica

Shopping for a bullet proof vest this weekend. Any suggestions? Never mind! That’s another thread.

Lightning is real, but I have to hike.

[Todd T]

Who can squat for 3 hours during a thunderstorm?

It’s usually not the 3-hour storms that surprise you.  But yeah, I have trouble squatting for even 15 minutes.  Fortunately, it’s the placement of feet that matters more than your height.  I can stand with my feet together a lot longer.  The harder case is when I’m asleep in the tent when the lightning starts.  I confess I’ve never gotten up to assume the position.

[DWR D]

The most important thing is to not be on a peak, high ridge, or pass.

Many times I have opted not to hike up to a peak or a pass in a thunder storm.

I have camped in many high basins and not been struck… though that is not as safe as below treeline. Me, I’d rather die from a lighting strike that try to squat for 3 hours :)))  … just kidding…

DWR…

[solitone]

Considering the map I posted previou, where would you have camped?

[solitone]

Seek terrain that is lower than its surroundings and is away from conductors.

Lightning, by J. Gookin, 2014, NOLS

How much lower?

[Dan]

In Colorado, we often have those daily thunderstorms in summer. The only times I’ve had that hair-standing-up feeling was when I was in an exposed area near a ridgeline or peak. So I feel a lot better if I’m at least 100-ish feet lower.

I didn’t look at your video @solitone and I can’t really see enough detail on your topo to get a sense of the terrain, but generally speaking I don’t hesitate to camp in a basin above timberline as long as I’m not at a real high point. I’m sure it’s never perfectly safe, but over time I’ve developed a certain comfort level with it.

[solitone]

According to this picture (from the NOLS book I got yesterday) the descent route (where I camped) is high risk (2). The only risk 3 (still high) places are woods or depressions in rolling terrain.

 

[Mark L]

Dixie’s hair standing on end up on a peak of the CDT during a lightning storm:

Back up the video a minute or so where she holds up her trekking poles & you can hear the crackle between them.

They made a wise move and descended.

 

-Mark

 

[AK Granola]

I did that once – a few friends and I standing on top of Igloo Mountain, Denali, while a storm was coming in. We could hear and see the storm a ways off, but not near us, so we didn’t even realize that the static in our hair was a bad deal. We thought it was funny. Young and dumb, and still survived.

[solitone]

That’s crazy! I never experienced that! I would have been very very frightened. If I got caught in a thunderstorm at 3.000 meters (even much lower than 13.000 feet in the video, but climate and morphology here in the Alps are different), it would take me hours to climb down below treeline.

[solitone]

The NOLS video linked in one of the first posts is no longer available, but can be reached clicking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVSCD1mdzY0

[Dan]

That’s crazy! I never experienced that! I would have been very very frightened. If I got caught in a thunderstorm at 3.000 meters (even much lower than 13.000 feet in the video, but climate and morphology here in the Alps are different), it would take me hours to climb down below treeline.

I know the area she was in very well, and she certainly didn’t descend below timberline. She probably just descended about 1000 ft and continued walking along the divide.

To put this into context, I suspect that almost everyone reading this has experienced a hair-raising moment on multiple occasions, and we are all still here, reading your thread. That’s not to say you should be complacent, but IMO you don’t need to be quite so panicky about it.

[Jerry Adams]

” I suspect that almost everyone reading this has experienced a hair-raising moment on multiple occasions, and we are all still here, reading your thread”

survivor bias

the ones that died are not reading this and posting about it

although normally, the term survivor bias doesn’t refer to people actually dying

(attempt at humor)

[Dan]

survivor bias

Jerry, I did actually think about that when I posted. ;-)

[AK Granola]

A friend and I were a day ahead of the guy who died on the JMT last year, from a lightning strike. The area he was in *should* have been safe, as safe as you can get out there, in the woods just before Muir Trail Ranch. Nowhere near a peak, not near water, in a grove of trees, not near the tallest tree, etc. And yet…poor guy.

I don’t think I’d ever go outside if I let fear stop me. I do the research, try to do the right things. At 3am today there was a giant -huge!! – cow moose in my yard, moaning to attract a bull, my silly dog sounding the alarm. Heaven help us if a big bull shows up, or two or three. But I still have to walk across the yard to get to my car to get to work. A few loud curses sometimes gets them to move off a bit, and release a bit of adenalin. But they’re bigger than me.

Lightning – just do the best you can. Nature will do whatever it pleases and you’re at its mercy once you’ve done all the right things and you’re still out there.

[jscott]

I can’t believe the woman in the video is stopping to record and talk about what’s going on. In all similar circumstances I’ve booked down hill as fast as I can. No time to record my life for posterity. I think this betrays a certain ingrained notion that we all have that things will turn out well no matter what. and anyway, it’s safe so long as we’re on the internet and not in real life, right?

Sorry. Old guy here. No one finds your video on the net. Yogi Berra said it already: “no one goes there anymore. Too many people.”.

[Dan]

It would be ironic if lightning hit a youtuber’s selfie-stick.

[Author]

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