According to research from RACQ nearly half of Queensland, Australia drivers will speed to avoid hail damage to their cars. The motoring club and insurer's research revealed 47% of motorists admitted to speeding to avoid hail damage to their cars - up from 44% last year. The research also found female drivers were more likely to speed (54.2%) than males (52%) when a storm hits.
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All 11 members of a football team were killed by a bolt of lightning at during a match in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to a Congolese newspaper that reported the incident, the other team was left unharmed!
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Moonbows, also known as lunar rainbows, are the dimmer cousin of more common daylight rainbows, made possible from the refraction of raindrops by moonlight, rather than sunlight. Moonbows are so rare because moonlight is not usually bright, and the alignment of conditions needed for them don't happen often. According to Atmospheric Optics, a bright near-full moon must be less than 42 degrees above the horizon, illuminating rain on the opposite side of a dark sky.
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On July 13, 1977, New York City endured a 25-hour blackout after lightning strikes power lines, prompting widespread arson, looting, and riots. The blackout was to many a metaphor for the gloom that had already settled on the city. An economic decline, coupled with rising crime rates and the panic-provoking (and paranoia-inducing) Son of Sam murders, had combined to make the late 1970s New York’s Dark Ages.
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A man in Atlanta, USA was lucky to be alive after he was struck by lightning, blowing him right out of his work boots. Sean O’Connor was doing yard work Saturday when he was struck by a bolt of lightning and knocked unconscious. According to the 30-year-old, the sun was shining and there appeared to be no threat of storms when he began working in his yard.
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An 11-year-old western Pennsylvania girl is recovering after she was struck by a bolt from the blue. According to Lisa Wehrle the sun was shining when her daughter, Britney, was struck by lightning Friday, apparently from a storm several miles away.
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Lightning can produce X-rays and gamma radiation. In the past, researchers thought that this phenomenon only lasted for a very short time, about a ten thousandth part of a second. However, the ionizing radiation of lightning appears to shine much longer than presumed: an afterglow of gamma radiation arises, which lasts up to 10,000 times longer. This is demonstrated for the first time by computer simulations of researchers from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam. Their article 'TGF afterglows: a new radiation mechanism from thunderstorms' was published on 22 October 2017 in the scientific journal Geophysical Review Letters. This discovery can provide more insight into how lightning develops. Terrestrial gamma flashes ‘Terrestrial gamma flashes’ were discovered about two decades ago. When lightning starts, electrons can be accelerated to very high energies, which cause an explosion of gamma radiation when these electrons crash into air molecules: the so-called terrestrial gamma flashes'. Bursts of up to a trillion (‘a billion billion’) gamma particles are measured on the ground, in airplanes and by satellites. However, these measurements are difficult, since these bursts are very focused and only last for a short time, around 0,0001 seconds. There is still much unknown about how these terrestrial gamma flashes arise and what their role is in the development of lightning. The now discovered afterglow helps to study this phenomenon. Afterglow in all directions CWI researcher Casper Rutjes explains what happens in the newly discovered radiation mechanism. “The radiation of a terrestrial gamma flash is so strong that nuclear reactions can take place. When the gamma rays hit the atomic nuclei of the air molecules, the protons and neutrons, of which atomic nuclei exist, can be detached. The loose neutrons can wander longer and farther than protons because they don’t have electrical charge. After a while, the neutron is captured by another atomic nucleus, which can again produce gamma radiation. The high energy of the gamma ray flash, which is used in releasing neutrons, is, so to speak, temporarily stored in the released neutrons.” The CWI researchers calculated that in this way an afterglow of new gamma radiation occurs, which lasts for 1,000 to 10,000 times longer than the gamma ray flash itself and which is not focused but radiates into all directions, which facilitates measurements. Afterglow measured The CWI researchers found in the scientific literature hardly any measurements that corresponded to the predictions, because almost no one was done on the right time scale. Researcher Casper Rutjes says: “Recently, our simulations have also been confirmed by experiments. Almost simultaneously, G.S. Bowers et al. of the University of California Santa Cruz, have measured a clear afterglow of gamma ray flashes in Japan, after a lightning bolt struck a wind turbine. That article, ‘Gamma-ray signatures of neutrons from a terrestrial gamma-ray flash’, also appeared now in the scientific journal Geophysical Review Letters. Radiation risk About the radiation risk Rutjes says: “The chance of being hit directly by a terrestrial gamma ray flash is very small. If someone in a plane is hit directly by such a narrow terrestrial gamma ray flash, this person will receive a radiation dose approximately equal to 400 times an X-ray picture (30 mSv)[1]. The afterglow that we discovered radiates into all directions, increasing the chance that a plane flying above a thunderstorm is hit, but fortunately, that radiation is much weaker. The radiation dose of the afterglow after lightning is not dangerous: less than passengers already receive through background radiation when they fly for an hour.” The research was conducted by Casper Rutjes, Gabriel Diniz, Ivan Ferreira and Ute Ebert from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, and it was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
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Lightning bolt hit Vatican twice, hours after Pope's Benedict XVI's shock resignation. The lightning touched the roof of St. Peter's Basilica, one of the holiest Catholic churches, hours after Pope’s shock announcement. The spooky moment, believed by some, to be a sign from God, was caught on camera by AFP photographer Filippo Monteforte.
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Mini-lightning may flash in the coldest craters on the moon, melting and vapourising soil. All that sparking could have altered the surface as much as impacts from incoming rocks and dust. The outer layer of the moon is a sort of history book recording the interactions between the moon and the rest of the solar system. To correctly interpret that history, we need to understand the mechanisms that shape it.
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Airplanes get hit by lightning mid-flight! Contrary to what you might believe, it’s a common occurrence on airplanes.
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According to WbMD, storm phobia is very real and should be taken seriously. Loyal masters are often awaken in the middle of the night – not from the thunder – but from the uninvited pet jumping in the bed looking for comfort from the storm. Cases of storm phobia in pets can be much more severe and should not be ignored. They say some pets have been known to “claw through drywall, chew carpets, or break through windows in their escalating panic.”
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On the 21st of August 2011, a thunderstorm forced the pope to cut short his speech to an estimated 1 million young pilgrims gathered at a Madrid airfield to mark World Youth Day. As rain soaked the crowd and lightning lit up the night sky on Saturday, the 84-year-old pontiff skipped the bulk of the speech and delivered brief greetings in half a dozen languages.
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A lightning strike along one of the submarine cables that connects Cayman’s Internet to the rest of the world knocked out Internet service for many on Grand Cayman Tuesday evening. The lightning hit a landing station at the U.S. end of the Maya-1 cable system between Cancun, Mexico and Hollywood, Florida, on Tuesday afternoon, affecting Internet access and some phone service in Cayman, according to local telecom companies and regulators.
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Mount Etna spectacularly exploded on the 3rd of December 2015 for the first time in two years, sending a plume of volcanic ash scorching through the sky. The cloud was lit up with the astonishing sight of a "dirty thunderstorm", which causes lightning to streak through a cloud of ash. This natural wonder occurs when tiny fragments of rock, ash and ice rub together to produce static electricity.
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The probability of getting struck by lightning is statistically very rare, but alas, storm-attributed deaths and injuries stretch into the low thousands on an annual basis. About 96% of those struck were in open environments when hit. A majority — as you may expect — come from frequent participators in outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, and climbing. Industrial designer kama jania’s ‘bolt’ line of tents was created to increase the safety of those unfortunate to be in the wrong place when the weather turns.
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The 1991 Ice Storm was one of the most damaging storms in Rochester history. It all began 25 years ago on Thursday. We took a look back with a woman who experienced it herself. For residents in our area that were around, the ice storm that began 25 years ago was an event unlike most had ever seen before and the memories of that storm are still as vivid and fresh as they were in 1991.
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In a rare incident of its kind, a coastguard diver and a citizen were killed after they were struck by a lightning bolt off Khairan beach of Kuwait on the 8th of May 2016. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that a jet ski of citizen Saad Khaled Al-Shereeda broke down and a coastguard boat was dispatched to rescue him. The ministry added that the coastguard diver, Abdullah Othman Al-Doussary, jumped in the water to help the man, but they were both struck by lightning and were killed instantly. In October last year, an Asian was killed by lightning in northern Kuwait during a freak storm. It is estimated that 6,000 to as many as 24,000 people are killed around the world by lightning strikes every year.
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More than 400 people were killed in southern Egypt, most of them when blazing fuel flooded into a village from a depot struck by lightning in a rainstorm. Lightning struck the depot's eight fuel tanks toward the end of the storm that raged across much of Egypt for up to five hours.
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This decade will go down in weather history as one of the wildest in modern times. Since 2010, we’ve seen both the widest and strongest tornado on record touch down in Oklahoma. Mexico felt the wrath of the strongest hurricane ever recorded in terms of wind speed. The American West is enduring a years-long drought with no end in sight. But it’s not all bad news. This decade is also on track to see the lowest number of lightning deaths we’ve ever recorded in the United States, and that’s quite the accomplishment.
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On 2015, during an August thunderstorm, Google lost data by lightning strikes! Google says data has been wiped from discs at one of its data centres in Belgium - after the local power grid was struck by lightning four times.
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