Phil,
Very interesting article.  I love thunder storms too.  In Michigan, 
we used to get really good ones, but out here in Maine the storms are 
very wimpy.  It's very disappointing.
Kathy


At 03:51 PM 6/21/2006, you wrote:
>Note.  This message actually is referring to Monday.
>
>      Yesterday, I sat outside during the late afternoon for about
>an hour listening to the thunder of an approaching storm.  I kept
>drifting off to sleep but each time I did, the thunder would
>awaken me.  I love listening to the storms and falling rain even
>though I was nearly killed by lightning once but I'll tell you
>about that later in this message.
>
>      Anyhow, the storm did not sound as if it were all that close.
>We live down hill, to the south, of a pretty high ridge about a
>mile to the north of us.  This ridge seems to funnel storms to the
>north or south of us, at least that's my theory, because it is
>very uncommon for a storm to pass directly overhead where we live.
>It happens, as you soon will read about, but not often.  Normally
>we seem to be on the edge of a storm passing by to the far north
>or far south.
>
>      So, as I said, I'm out on our deck swing, which has a cloth
>canopy, waiting to see if it starts to rain which means I would
>then get up and remove the cushion from the swing and carry it
>inside until the storm was over.  It is a large section of
>upholstered foam rubber.  I just simply peal off three Velcro
>strips, and carry it indoors.  If I let it get too wet, it takes
>several hours for it to dry.  This is what I ended up doing
>yesterday but the rain only lasted about three minutes because the
>storm passed to the south of where we live.
>
>      Later that evening, Gretchen came home and told me she
>witnessed a cloud to ground lightning strike and it was probably
>no more than 50 to 60 feet from her car as she drove home.  She
>began by asking me if lightning isn't supposed to come from the
>cloud to ground.  According to my research I did years ago, plus
>what I have studied in recent years, lightning actually begins
>from the ground but what we see is the lighting bolt flash coming
>from the cloud to earth.  The storm builds up a densely compacted
>ozone corridor to the ground before the spark from the ground is
>generated.  This, in turn, acts as an electrical contact, or
>signal, and the lightning bolt arks to the ground.  The subsequent
>thunder is generated due to the super heated air manufactured by
>the tremendous voltage and amperage.  The thunder is created when
>the ambient air suddenly is super heated and instantly returned to
>cool air which then collapses in upon itself much like the
>compression of air produced by a hand clap.
>
>      Gretchen asked this question because she said, as she was
>driving alone in the rain, she saw a small flicker of light just
>off the road and glanced that way to see what it might be.  Just
>then, the lightning flashed and struck the ground exactly at the
>point she was focused on.  This opportunity is rare, that is, as
>much lightning as there is worldwide every second, few people ever
>see a direct lightning strike.
>
>      Lightning is, of course, nothing more than electrical energy.
>It is a lot of energy, without a doubt, and you certainly don't
>want to be anywhere around it when it arks to earth, but it is
>energy regardless.
>
>      There are cold and hot types of lightning bolts.  Hot bolts
>normally don't kill a person.  they may start a fire or cause some
>damage to whatever it hits but they are called hot bolts because
>they are low voltage and even lower amperage.  It isn't the
>voltage in lightning that kills but rather the amperage.  This is
>true of all electricity.  That's why you don't die instantly when
>you plug your fingers into your house wall socket; the amperage is
>low enough.  Cold lightning bolts have been estimated as much as
>500,000 amperes and 1,000,000,000 volts.  That will kill anyone.
>
>      When I was about five years old, my dad and uncle took me
>with them when they went on a fishing trip to the Lakes of the
>Ozarks.  We were in the cabin one day because it was raining.  I
>went outside and stood on the covered porch to watch the rain.  As
>I stood and watched, suddenly there was a brilliant flash and the
>loudest thunder clap one could imagine.  Frightened, I went
>running back into the cabin.  After the storm, we heard people
>talking about a tree that had been hit by lightning.  As we drove
>out of the camping area to go get something to eat, we saw the
>tree.  There was nothing wrong with the tall tree except for one
>thing: it had no bark.  It looked bleached white compared to all
>the surrounding trees.  Lightning hat hit the tree, super heated
>the electrical conducting sap of the tree, and the result was all
>the bark exploding outward, leaving the tree naked.
>
>      A youth pastor friend of mine went to a church camp in the
>state of New York.  One day a big electrical storm blew up.  My
>friend grew up on an Iowa farm so he was used to storms but this
>one was very different.  He watched the lightning for some time
>but suddenly he witnessed a direct strike, not far from his cabin,
>which struck the ground.  to his amazement the lightning literally
>bounced back into the air like a ball.  In fact, it bounced as
>many as three times.  He reported he witnessed at least six
>strikes exactly like this in a short period of time and some bolts
>bounced more than three times.  I asked what happened when they
>stopped bouncing and he said the bolts of lightning just suddenly
>exploded as if that was where they struck the ground originally.
>
>      A friend of mine from Boulder, Colorado decided to go into
>the high country and do some hiking with some friends.  Colorado
>has 57 trails that will cross 14,000 feet at the highest point so
>there is a lot of enthusiasm for hiking in this state.
>
>      My friend, and his friends, had reached the 12,000 foot level
>on one of the trails when my friend fell and broke his ankle.
>They had no choice but to reverse course and begin the long
>journey back down the mountain.  They helped my friend as much as
>they could but it was slow going.
>
>      When you are above 8,000 feet, and especially higher, a
>thunder storm can blow up within seconds.  The problem at the
>higher elevations is that you are often, and quite literally, in
>the clouds and thunderstorms generally carry electricity.  Just
>such a storm developed and quickly engulfed the high mountain
>hikers.  They were still at the 10,000 foot level.  My friend told
>me later that not only did it quickly begin raining, but lightning
>began striking the side of the mountain all around them.  They all
>spread out and stopped and hunkered down to attempt to make as
>small a target as possible.  Laying down on the ground is not wise
>because if lightning strikes the ground nearby, it fragments and
>spreads as it penetrates the soil.  It is therefore best to simply
>squat and make yourself as small as possible creating a smaller
>target.  My friend said that he suddenly, in the middle of all the
>flashing and crashing of the thunder, smelled ozone so strongly,
>it was almost over powering.  He braced himself because he knew he
>likely was in the path of the next lightning bolt.  When the
>lightning struck, he said it was no more than ten feet from where
>he was.  Soon the storm passed, and they eventually got him down
>off the side of the mountain.
>
>      When I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, I was talking to a retired
>farmer one day about a term paper I was writing in high school.
>My subject was lightning.  I told him about my research into the
>characteristics of lightning and that one book described what is
>called ball lightning.  The text book said that some lightning
>will strike a tree or telephone pole or even a fence post, curl
>up into what looks like a glowing ball, roll to the ground and
>then it starts rolling across the open ground as if it really were
>a ball.  The first thing it comes in contact with, the ball
>explodes just as if that were the very place the lightning bolt
>had hit in the first place.  The farmer told me he had literally
>seen ball lightning on his farm and he said the book was very
>accurate in the description and how ball lightning formed and then
>detonated.  Sometimes this ball lightning is called plasma balls
>by scientists.
>
>      A few years ago, a friend had stopped by to help me with one
>of my two computers.  He had finished his work and we were
>standing in the larger rooms of my small two room office.  It is
>in the very room I am writing from at this moment.  Back then, I
>had a large metal office desk.  I was leaning against it as my
>friend stood in the middle of the room and talked.  As we talked,
>I heard a rather loud sounding thunder storm approaching from the
>west.  It had just rolled off the mountains and was slowly coming
>our way.  I went into the other part of the office and unplugged
>everything just in case the storm went overhead.  I left
>everything in the larger room plugged in but decided, if the storm
>came any closer, I would unplug all my equipment.
>
>      We continued talking and I leaned against the metal desk
>again as we talked.  I thought little of the new antenna I had put
>on the tower that had its tip at 90 feet.  My friend finally said,
>"I was born and raised here in Colorado but I have never seen
>lightning like I am seeing out your office windows right now."  It
>had not yet started to rain.  Dry lightning of this nature is
>particularly dangerous and violent.  The lightning storm continued
>for at least 20 minutes before a single rain drop fell.
>
>      Did you know that lightning can precede a building storm by
>as far as 20 miles?  that means, the front of a thunder storm is
>more dangerous than the back of one.  By the way, you can turn on
>your radio and tune off a local station and listen for the louder
>pops which is an electrical discharge.  then you can count the
>seconds until you hear the thunder.  That is supposed to be the
>number of miles the lightning is from where you are.  Don't bet
>your life on that one but that's what they claim.
>
>      As we continued our conversation, the man's wife came out to
>my office from our living room to see if we were done with the
>computer.  She commented on the lightning as well.  Suddenly, I
>lost my hearing.  All I remember was a sound in the room that
>sounded like a shotgun blast.  Moments later, as my hearing
>slowly returned, my friend's wife said, "I saw a flash of light
>near you," and she reached over, grabbing my arm, and pulled me
>away from the desk.  What she had seen was the lightning which had
>struck my ham radio antenna 65 feet in the air, raced down my
>transmission line, and flashed over my grounding switch that was
>switched to ground.  This forced the lightning bolt right back
>outside and into my 8 foot long ground rod pounded into the ground
>years earlier.  If that grounding switch had not been turned to
>the ground position, the lightning would have taken the path of
>least resistance which could have been my desk upon which I was
>leaning.  I was three feet away from the grounding switch.  Every
>breaker in my breaker box flipped off from the tremendous
>electrical energy envelop build up in the room.  The breaker box
>was about five feet away from where I stood and was mounted on the
>outside of the house.  Light bulbs popped all over the house.  One
>of our phones burned out.  Later I discovered that my ham radio
>lost some small component parts from the excessive energy build up
>in the room.
>
>      Later, I asked my friends, and my wife and kids, what the
>strike had sounded like.  They all reported it was just one big
>thunder clap and the loudest they had ever heard.  I never heard
>the thunder; I only heard a loud pop in the room as the ambience
>makeup of the room suddenly converted to electrical energy and
>popped.
>
>      When Sandy and I lived in western Colorado, it was in a small
>town of about 800 people.  The town was above 5,000 feet but in a
>valley immediately at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.  thunder
>storms, although not often, would roll off the mountains and drop
>into this valley.  Thus, the storms were incredibly low to the
>ground.  People were struck by lightning every year because they
>just never thought lightning would strike them.
>
>      One summer, a friend from church brought me home.  sandy was
>already there.  He pulled into the circle drive in front of the
>house as a storm was blowing up.  When I got out, huge drops of
>rain were beginning to fall.  I stepped up on the porch, opened
>the front door, and stepped into the house.  Our patio sliding
>door was open on the other side of the house and I could hear the
>storm building all around the house.  I started to pull my suit
>jacket off and I opened my mouth to tell my wife I was home, when
>I heard, out the back door, what sounded like some giant Paul
>Bunion story book character breaking a telephone pole in half
>across his knee.  A split second later, the loudest thunder clap I
>have ever heard rocked the house and about made me jump out of my
>skin.  Later we found out the lightning had hit a pole not 100
>feet from our back door.
>
>      You would think, after all I have written so far, I would be
>afraid of lightning and I am.  I still think like everyone else
>and that is, lightning won't strike me.  So I sit outside and
>listen to approaching storms just as I used to lay on the living
>room floor as a little boy and watch the storms and the lightning
>in the Iowa skies.  One book I read said that they estimate
>lightning strikes the earth 100 times per seconds all over the
>globe.  They didn't say how many of those 100 times it strikes
>people.
>
>Phil.
>
>
>Has He Ever Crossed Your Mind?
>www.SafePlaceFellowship.com