OT? Lightning

The static charge is dissipated by the metal framework; the golf club can't bleed off the charge.

I didn't get killed, but one time I got a tingle when I was walking across a parking lot in the rain, with an umbrella. I expect the strike was someplace close by and I got a side effect. It was just small tingle in my thumb where it pressed against the ferrule at the base of the shaft.

Bill

You were lucky , local to me , 3 killed in the same strike

When you're playing with that much voltage, the conductivity of the umbrella or golf club has very little effect.

You are in equal danger of a lightning injury outdoors regardless of whether or not you are standing near, carrying, or wearing any metal objects. Lightning is a large-scale event that is not influenced by small ojects on the ground, so distancing yourself from small metal objects will not make you safe from lightning. Metal objects like umbrellas, golf clubs, bicycles and fences will attract a lightning channel only if the strike is already a few feet away - in which case you would still experience an injury from being that close to begin with.

Thanks.

So if you're willing to stand in the rain in the open space, you might as well play golf. Hard to beleive after all these years.

"It's true that the chances of you being injured or killed by lightning are very small." It should be "your being injured..." Should I discount what he says cause his English is bad? That's my first reaction.

"Every one who's been accidentally sturck by lightning did nothing to attract the strike to them." That's not true. Everyone agrees that standing under a lone tree is dangerous, and I've read in the paper about people killed while standing under a tree during a lightning storm. In fact a paragraph below he says it's commonly understood to stay away from trees, and there is some merit to that. But that it is dangerous anywhere outside.

Oh, well. I don't play golf anyhow, but I guess umbrellas are safe.

The average lightning strike has traveled 5 miles. It really doesn't care about the last two feet.

Golfers get hit because golf courses are open spaces and they're frequently out in the weather, being fanatical about the sport. Their club is overhea d for a tiny fraction of the 3 hours or so it takes to play a round, maybe half a second a shot times 80 shots.

Umbrella holders have them overhead constantly. If that mattered, they sho uld get hit more than golfers. But they're not exposed as many hours, bein g smart enough to come out of the rain.

Having the club over head doesn't matter all that much. The golfer is still several feet above the surrounding terrain. So the golfer kind of represents at thin extrusion from the ground. Lightning is more likely to hit a thin extrusion than an adjacent flat surface. That's why they make lightning rods thin and pointed.

Now if you are in a group of golfers you could appoint one as the designated lightning rod and have him/her hold his/her club in the air.

Bill

Lightning safety tips and facts -- and which activities are more dangerous than golfing. Soccer is the deadliest sport when it comes to lightning. Of the sports activities, soccer saw the greatest number of deaths with 12 (golf had eight). Around the home, yard work, including mowing the lawn, accounted for 12 fatalities. For work-related activities, ranching/farming topped the list with 14 deaths.

Ok. Forget about golf, soccer, fishing, yard work, farming, etc, and you'll probably be safe.

A spelling chequer doesn't catch such mistakes.

Maybe. According the article, water sports are more dangerous than golfing. Therefore, avoid fishing or swimming in the water hazard.

Ummm... speaking of bad grammar. The umbrella is safe. We're talking about whether you are safe, not the umbrella.

You're safe but only when you're not connected to the umbrella. Given the choice of lightning hitting you with or without an umbrella, I would say the odds are about the same.

Actually, your best protection is to get someone else to do something stupid and wave the a golf club or umbrella around during a storm, while you watch from a safe distance. Always bring a sacrificial accomplice or relative during a lightning storm. They take the hit while you're quite safe.

Good thing I don't care for golf - I'm tall and thin...

However my head doesn't come to a point regardless of other opinions!

John ;-#)#

Thin and pointed like the part of my umbrella above the cloth.

I'm care about those golfers, but I care 1000 times as much about the umbrella holdes.

And round bales kill more people than sharks.

Years ago, when our spring here in WA State was especially wet, I was determined to get the garden rototilled and ready for planting. So I was out in the yard, in the pouring rain, stubbornly tilling the wet ground. My wife kept yelling at me from the door to come inside or I might get hit by lightning. There was thunder and lightning going on but I knew there was no way it would get close to me or hit me. Finally my wife and one of her clients both yelled at me to come inside. I took off my hearing protection and walked over to the house, pissed at being hassled and ready to complain about it. Before I got the chance to put my foot in my mouth they both informed me that lightning had struck the chainlink fence 15 feet behind me and didn't that scare me enough to get inside? I had just been ignoring the thunder and lightning and had no idea it was such a close strike. I think I was pretty lucky that day not to have been cooked. Eric

Before I got

Yes, it is a fairly easy to understand phenomenon that lightning that strikes REALLY close to you doesn't make a lot more noise. If the strike is essentially end-on to you, all the sound goes outward from the bolt. What you hear sounds more like a car door being slammed than a lightning bolt. I assume you were on a tractor of some sort? That prevented you from getting zapped by currents in the ground. You really DON'T want to have (both) feet on the ground anywhere near where lightning touches down.

I've been fairly close to a few lightning strikes (and not operating noisy equipment at the time) and was interested to observe that while the strike was really close (visually) it didn't make a huge noise.

Jon

I think the noise was huge, but it was a sharp crack that didn't last long, and I didn't notice echos after hearing that. That's when I found a split tree in my backyard about 100 feet away.

Greg

I was standing on the muddy ground holding the plastic coated steel handles on the rototiller. So I think I'm pretty lucky. Pretty stupid too at the time. Eric

Oh, WOW! Well, that plastic may have really worked, too! Over a couple feet of wet ground, you probably don't drop all that much voltage, so a little insulation might really help. On the other hand, the electrical potential from a ground strike travels quite far. I had my hand on a water faucet when we had a ground strike probably 1/4 mile away, and I got a strong tingle.

Jon

I can be pretty clueless sometimes. Once I was pulling crab pots from my 12 foot John boat while my wife watched from the shore. She started yelling and waving to get my attention but I couldn't hear her. She wanted to get my attention because a grey whale surfaced on the other side of the boat, close enough for me to touch, and I didn't notice it until it started to go under again. Eric

That does sound like a close call. You're lucky you're not still welded to the rototiller.

Did the lightning kill the gray whale?

Ahh, statistics, How do we account for deaths per man hour performing the activity? Seems to be US stats, I would think there is a lot more total (man hours performing the activity) for golf than soccer. so soccer would seem to be much more dangerous than the 12 vs 8 shows. Mikek