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?
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