In the next month or so, our likelihood of getting a rainstorm will increase. It is the way the seasons go, especially here in Ohio.
April showers bring May flowers. And what do May flowers bring?
Pilgrims.
Anyway, we think of springtime being filled with rainy days.
Yet, here in the Buckeye State, June and July are the wettest months, with nearly four inches of precipitation in each of those two months.
And we know when it rains, it pours.
It also lightnings.
I learned an interesting thing the other day about lightning. It was widely believed in the Middle Ages that ringing church bells during thunderstorms would keep that pesky lightning from striking nearby buildings.
But here is the thing. More than a hundred bell ringers were struck by lightning and killed while they were doing this. So. They stopped the practice.
A lot of people are afraid of getting struck by lightning. I’m one of them. I don’t obsess about it or anything. But if I hear thunder? I’m not going to linger in the great outdoors to see its partner up close.
The odds of being struck by lightning in our lifetimes are small. Only around one person in 12,000 gets hit by that hot white bold. Yet. Astraphobia — the fear of getting struck by lightning — is the third most common phobia in America. It falls behind acrophobia — fear of heights — and zoophobia — fear of animals.
Sidebar. I wouldn’t have thought that fear of animals would be the number one phobia. I figured it would be heights or tight spaces. But I guess animals cover a lot, like snakes, birds, and sharks.
Anyway. Back to the skies. In the United States, on average, lightning kills 93 and injures 300 people annually. Lightning strikes somewhere in the United States 20 million times per year. Or so they say.
But that isn’t the most. Thank goodness we aren’t all standing around the intersection of the Catatumbo River and Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela. The lightning really strikes there, again and again. In fact, more than 300 nights a year, that lightning hits this spot. It often fires off several times a second. It is all because of the warm trade winds from the Caribbean Sea mixing with lots of cool air descending from the Andes Mountains. This makes for an extremely unusual weather pattern. And with that, this area holds the record for the world’s most lightning bolts per square mile.
Finally. A lightning bolt can reach 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot. About five times hotter than the surface of our sun. And it moves super fast — about 30,000 times faster than a bullet.
Here’s one more little-known fact about lightning. The men driving trains often get struck by lightning. It is because they are good conductors.
Good conductors.
I once saw one of these guys get struck by lightning, and it completely surprised me. The man was shocked as well.
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“Electricity is really just organized lightning”
― George Carlin
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“It is lightning that strikes, not thunder.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo
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“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
— Mae West
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Light. That bolt. That bolt. Hot and fast.
