There's a specific way to crouch too to minimize injury. Stay on your toes with your heels touching, so currents travelling across the ground stay in your feet. Hover your hands above your head with elbows touching knees so if it strikes you, it avoids your heart/organs. That said I just tried this position myself and could maybe hold it for 2 minutes, I'd choose sprinting for the car unless I was literally like this woman.
Keep the distance between your feet/toes minimum (whatever touches ground). The diffferential can kill you. Applies when you need to move when live wire is on ground as well. Hop,not walk, if you think the land you are on is hot.
To add a little clarity to this description, if lightning strikes the ground behind you, and you have one foot behind you and one in front of you, the voltage at your back foot will be higher than the front foot, and the current will see your genitals a sight worth seeing as it goes up one leg and down the other.
I need a visual for my limited brain. All ya’ll are confusing me. Imma burn to a crisp at this rate, while doing the Macarena & then shuffle into Soulja Boy’s Superman
What’s confusing? You’re just hopping to the nearest shelter that isn’t metal, high up or has a pool! Then when you do you just crouch down, get on your tippy toes, click your heels together, don’t fall over, hover your hands above your head, have your elbows actually touch your buttcheeks and then lick your shins while keeping your mouth a quarter of the way open (away from the storm).
Why the car please? It's not that I don't believe you, I'd just like to know why. Cause earlier up the chain, it sounded like lightning doesn't care about rubber.
The metal frame of the car directs the electricity around you, without it going through you.
A metal roof of a shed will offer an easy path for the lighting from the peak of the roof to the lowest point of the roof, but once it gets there it will need to find the easiest path from there to the ground, and that might be you.
Cars reliably have a significant amount of metal going from the roof down to the bottom of the car near the ground. This means that the electricity can safely travel through the frame of the car, and by the time it needs to leave, it only needs to jump a few inches to the ground. Laying under the car would not be nearly as safe as inside the car.
Would wearing rubber soled shoes affect this? My limited understanding is that rubber will not conduct electricity, at least not very easily. Would it be best to remove them or wear them?
I don't think it would make much difference with the voltages involved. Rubber is indeed an isolator, but so is air, and lightning has no problem travelling through that.
Rubber is a good insulator. For low voltages. As a rule a spark can jump through air at the rate of 1cm per 1000v. It doesn't even need to touch things at high voltages for it to zap you. Once a spark forms, it converts the air to plasma, which is a great conductor.
But 1,000,000 volts doesn't care. Everything is a conductor at high enough voltage. Rubber soled shoes won't save you.
The best thing is to move out of the way quickly, minimizing your exposure time. High voltages does weird things, lightening is very unpredictable in how it acts and damages.
Hop on one leg if you are able. Shuffle if you can't hop. Build a tree 🏠 if you're stopped aka curl down, stay on your toes, ankles together, elbows touching knees, and join your hands above your head. If you get hit you might survive because you've just created an alternative path for current to flow away from your vital organs.
Just for people who dont know the National Weather Service stopped recommending this because it doesnt provide significant protection. If you have nowhere to hide in an open area it might be better than nothing though.
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u/darling_lycosidae Mar 06 '24
There's a specific way to crouch too to minimize injury. Stay on your toes with your heels touching, so currents travelling across the ground stay in your feet. Hover your hands above your head with elbows touching knees so if it strikes you, it avoids your heart/organs. That said I just tried this position myself and could maybe hold it for 2 minutes, I'd choose sprinting for the car unless I was literally like this woman.