Just curious. How do they know it was a lightning strike and not other dangers people face in the wild?
What a shame that Andrew and Ian never learned Rule Number One for Lightning Storms.
It's very tempting to seek shelter under a tree during a storm and fool yourself that "Lightning won't get me." After all, who wants to lie down on the ground in a gale downpour?
I was nearly hit by lightning. It was earth shaking, no joke. RIP
Can't these people count??
Talk about wrong place, wrong time... It doesn’t getting any more wrong than this.
A month ago, I had a flat in a fierce thunderstorm in the country. Got out to look at it quickly and hopped back in truck. A few minutes later a bolt came down and killed a horse I was watching in the field about 40 feet from me. Knocked it over dead and sent seven others away in flight across the field. I think it never knew what hit it. Later, the owner came out and we talked. The horse was over 30 years old and had had a good life. Then, a clean death.
My last clinical rotation in medical school was on Mackinac Island in Michigan. Mother, Father, and daughter were riding bikes around the perimeter of the island when a big thunderstorm blew In from the Straight of Mackinac. They made the mistake of sheltering under a large tree. When I arrived in the ambulance Father was lying dead on the ground with a one inch diameter smoking entry wound on his right temple and a matching exit wound on the bottom of his right foot and a smoking hole in the ground where he had been standing. Mother and Daughter were knocked to the ground and were in shock. I looked at that man and my thought was “Geez buddy, God really wanted you dead!”
In August 1968, while (Virginia) Governor Godwin was attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Becky and her mother were vacationing at the Oceanfront area of Virginia Beach when Becky was killed in a lightning accident.[6]The cause of death was given by hospital authorities as “complications arising from severe electrical burns of the lungs.”
I will never forget it. A person can sense a pending lightning strike because of the ionization of air molecules and the hair standing on end. I have told myself over and over to hold my breath if it ever happens to me.
GORT on low power mode?
Very sorry to hear this.
We were wondering what had happened to them.
Shocking.
So, the lightning strike is dead too.
In previous threads I don’t remember anyone predicting this as the cause of death. Most thought it was exposure. Just goes to show that you never know until you know.
Lightning does not have to hit what it destroys. The unbelievably intense magnetic field that surrounds a lightning bolt will induce electrical current flow in any conductive material withing that magnetic field. It is entirely possible that the deadly charge was induced directly in their bodies.
and Hypothermia is so boring
I wonder if the vax leaves young otherwise healthy people more succeptable to hypothermia
My dad had never done any work with concrete, but he was unintimidated by any task, and he just purchased a book on how to do it and went out and bought an completely rust-encased "one-lunger" cement mixer-and did it. My brothers and I were enlisted to work on it. So, we had already poured the concrete for the four foot wide walkway all the way around the 40x20 foot pool, and it was done, so we began the patio which was probably 25x20 feet, had the forms laid and had already poured a few the day before. On the day we went out to do a few more squares in the form, we had just mixed and began the process of getting the concrete in a wheel barrow and pouring it into the form.
A thunderstorm came in, and we had already poured one square, so when the rain began to come down hard, we were trying desperately to smooth it out so we could cover it with a tarp, and BAM!
A lightning bolt hit the swimming pool and I happened to be looking at it when it happened, and I swear the entire pool flashed, but...that may just have been my eyes. (I did not even know lightning would hit water...but...I wasn't that versed on it.) It probably hit about 20 feet away.
Well. I can tell you, my brothers and I must have looked like we were shot out of a cannon, dropping everything and running in the house.
That was fifty years ago, and to this day, all that concrete we laid looks great, no cracks or spalling...except for that one square. It sticks out because all the other areas on that concrete patio look perfect, but that one has a grainy surface to it. I think that is damn good, living in New England, which is not friendly to concrete given the weather!
What frightened me was that I could FEEL the electricity! I could feel it in my body (not as a 'shock' but...in a way I cannot explain) and oddly, I could feel it in my teeth and also got an odd metallic taste in my mouth. I very nearly shat myself, and ran directly into the building I was running to.
It was pouring rain torrentially all day, and we made a mistake and took a fork of the trail and ended up going around the wrong side of the mountain, which forced us to backtrack. We ended up trudging around in the pouring rain for eight hours before we got to the top. The rain was so heavy that the trail going up the mountain was a nearly knee deep white water rapid. We tried to walk on the sides, but in the end, eventually gave up and just trudged through the water.
By the end of the day, I was cold, wet (even with full rain gear) and exhausted. But we were getting closer to our destination, and had stopped to take a breather, when BOOOOOOOOM! A lighting bolt hit somewhere nearby, close enough there was no delay, and being at that elevation, it sounded like we were right in the cloud that lightning bold had emanated from! I remember being exhausted, and reflexively bear-hugging a birch tree in terror with water streaming down my face, then instantly releasing it (realizing how dangerous that was) and was filled with new energy to get to the summit which was less than a half hour away!
Fortunately, nobody was in the abandoned Ranger Shack, and water was pouring through the overhead in so many places that there was one relatively dry spot in one corner, so that was where we set up for the night. We fried pieces of steak over a backpack stove, and ate it with rice pilaf. To this day, all three of us agree that was one of the most satisfying meals we had ever eaten!
What a show.
I am from New England, where the terrain rarely affords the ability to see a large oncoming storm. Generally, you only see a very limited part of the storm. But in Oshkosh, as we watched that storm come in, we could see it from horizon to horizon. For those of you in other parts of the country, this may be old hat, but for me, being from New England, I was not accustomed to seeing it.
I watched in awe as the storm approached, and at any given time, I saw four or five simultaneous lighting strikes interspersed with individual strikes, so it was continuous. As I said, if you lived in the plains or Kansas, this is commonplace and not as big of a deal, but I had never seen anything like it, and it was intimidating.
“I fortunately escaped without a wound, tho’ the right Wing where I stood was exposed to & received all the Enemy’s fire and was the part where the man was killed & the rest wounded. I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”
King George III, after reading this was said to have commented:
“He would not say so, if he had been used to hear many.”
Strange. I have seen multiple cases of lightning hitting trees and almost always there is evidence such as tree roots near the surface of the soil literally exploding and disturbing the soil covering them.
Elk has connections Mother natures makes thunder.
Coroner has abdolutely no clue....but a guess with no proof.
Sign the form! Let’s get paid.
Math is hard - Barbie