It's Raining Fish and Spiders (27 page)

Thunder is the result of lightning. Thunder could not exist without lightning. It's obvious when you see lightning that first you see the flash and then you hear the thunder. Experiencing lightning and thunder is one of the easiest ways for people to understand that sound travels much more slowly than light.

Thunder can be heard up to 15 miles away from a lightning strike.

Ever notice how dogs behave when they hear thunder? They hide, or whine, or bark and run around like crazy. My dog, Sandy, barks like mad! I don't know why dogs are affected like this, but if I find out, I'll let you know!

Save Me from This Madness!

Lightning blasts the ground 20 to 30 million times a year. The top six places people get zapped:

1. standing in an open field
   
2. underneath a tree
   
3. on bodies of water (boating and fishing)
   
4. near tractors and other heavy equipment
   
5. on golf courses
   
6. on the phone (excluding cell phones and cordless)
   

How can you stay safe? Get inside a building, or inside a car or truck with the windows closed!

You can survive being struck by lightning—in fact, the majority of people who are struck do not die. This definitely does
not
mean that you should ignore the danger and stay outside during a storm!

Your chance of surviving a lightning strike is greater if someone nearby knows CPR. Unlike the cartoons, lightning does not blow up a person, cause someone to burst into flames, or fry anyone into a smoldering black lump! Lightning can burn off your hair or singe your clothes, but mostly it affects your body's electrical system.

Most people who are struck by lightning appear dead, but they are in cardiac arrest and need CPR. Many people think that if you touch someone who has been struck by lightning, you will get electrocuted. That only happens in cartoons! There is no danger in touching or aiding someone who has been struck by lightning.

If you are outside during a thunderstorm and you feel your hair start to stand on end, or if you're fishing and your line appears to just hang in the air when you cast, or if you are wearing a raincoat that feels like it's lifting into the air, lightning will strike soon. You are feeling the static electrical charges in the air mounting. Get to a place of safety immediately!

There's electricity in the air!
Kid Gizmo; used by permission.

This Dude Is 'da Man! The Story of Roy Sullivan

“Lightning set my underclothes on fire!” said Roy Sullivan to a captivated audience on the 1980s TV show,
That's Incredible!
Roy was a ranger in the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He was dubbed the “human lightning rod.” He had been stuck by lightning eight times. That's right, in eight separate incidents he was struck by lightning and lived! Roy owns a place in the
Guinness Book of World Records
for being struck by lightning more than any other human being.

The first hit he took was while he was standing in the park's lookout tower in 1942. His only injury was the loss of a big toenail. In 1969, Roy's eyebrows were singed when lightning struck him while he was driving along a mountain road. A year later he was walking across his yard when lightning zapped him again, searing his left shoulder.

In 1972, he was struck a fourth time while working in the ranger station. The lightning set his hair on fire! He grabbed a bucket of water and poured it over his head to put out the flames. “I'm just allergic to lightning,” he said at the time.

While on patrol in the Shenandoah National Park in 1973, Roy saw a storm cloud forming and drove away quickly. He said the cloud seemed to follow him. He thought he had outrun it, but when he got out of his truck, lightning struck him for the fifth time and left him with an injured ankle.

Just when you thought his luck might turn for the better, it got worse! While fishing in a fresh-water pond on a Saturday morning in 1977, lightning struck Roy for the seventh time, hitting him in the top of the head and traveling down his right side. With his hair singed and burns on his chest and stomach, Roy staggered toward his car. As he stumbled down the trail, a bear appeared and tried to swipe three trout from his fishing line! Despite everything that had happened, Roy managed to find the courage and strength to smack the bear with a branch. That was the twenty-second bear he had hit in his lifetime.

In the early 1980s, Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning for the eighth time. Roy just seemed to attract lightning. But despite the number of times he was zapped, he was never seriously hurt! He believed that an unseen force was trying to destroy him. He told a reporter once, “I don't believe God is after me. If he were, the first bolt would have been enough.”

Oddly enough, Roy lived in a town named Dooms!

If I were as lucky as Roy, I would have bought a lottery ticket!

Holy Cow! It's Raining Lightning!

David Dewhurst; used by permission.

Lightning takes many different forms and shapes. All lightning discharges occur in the same manner, but the conditions under which they develop and are viewed make the flash look different. Scientists and ordinary people have given different types of lighting interesting names, such as:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Did you know the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second? I wonder how fast lightning would be if it didn't zigzag!!

Could Someone Please, Please, Give Me a Glass of Water?—Drought

Kangaroo in drought conditions
Kumalie Walker; used by permission.

Droughts are extremely prolonged weather events that cause severe environmental, economic, and sociological damage. A drought is simply a long period—a season or more—of dry weather. During a drought, there is either no precipitation or much, much less than normal. Droughts can last for months, or even years.

Unlike wet weather events like thunderstorms and hurricanes, which have a somewhat predictable life cycle and timetable, there is no certain time that a drought begins or ends. The most famous droughts in U.S. history occurred in the 1930s, at the same time as a massive heat wave. These two conditions created one of the greatest and most devastating weather disasters ever. And to top it all off, this happened at the time of the Great Depression, when the U.S. economy was at an all-time low.

Poor farming practices and years of sustained drought were the cause of the Dust Bowl, an area of more than 50 million acres that stretched from Texas to Canada, and from Colorado to Illinois. Farmers deeply plowed the Plains grasslands and planted wheat. Even though the drought continued, farmers kept planting—and nothing grew.

The plants that held the topsoil in place were gone. Windstorms blew that topsoil into rolling clouds of dust, which turned day into night. At one point during 1935, the Texas Panhandle saw 38 days of continuous storms that sent dust all the way from the Great Plains to the East Coast and out to sea. Dust deposits were reported on ships as far as 300 miles from the coast!