During my Tenderfoot Investiture ceremony officially making me a member of the Boy Scouts of America in 1956, I was told that the two stars on the Scout badge stood for truth and knowledge.
I've tried to stick with the Truth idea and have pursued Knowledge for some fifty-one years since that ceremony.
I pursued it so much that a degree in Biology landed me in the teaching field where I taught every science class certified by the state of Texas, for whatever that is worth.
I'm just the curious type I think.
Then I got a real job complete with substantially better pay.
This recent lightning strike incident at Philmont and the subsequent posts by former staff members of their rememberance got me to thinking about the whole subject of lightning, what it does and how we can avoid becoming lightning statistics.
From the posts, I believe it got a lot of others to thinking also.
For example, I found a website that showed that on that same day, July 29th that five people were killed by lightning on a mountain in South Korea.
This is not the first time I have thought about it and altered my activities. That started in about 1960 while washing dishes to get out of the doghouse with my mother when lightning struck the power line down the street. It traveled through the power lines knocking out every electric motor in our home, AC unit, clocks, washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, freezers and into the electric garbage disposal attached to the sink I had my hands in.
Luckliy it only felt like being attached to a lawn mower spark plug. It was not fun!
I used to teach school with a man who was struck by lightning while mowing his lawn. I did not know him before the incident, but people who dis tell me it really messed up him and his life. He would readily tell you it did. I was very compassionate toward him, He’d been down the road and suffered for it.
That and the fact one of my high school classmates and fellow Boy Scout troopmates was killed by lightning while playing golf or rather seeking shelter under some trees while playing golf has brought it just a little closer to home for me.
I work in a large chemical manufacturing plant where we make all sorts of things used in this modern world from plastics to cosmetics. The units that make these chemicals consist of miles of pipes of various sizes, pumps to pump the chemicals through the pipes and steel structures to support and contain these pipes and chemicals, not to mention large steel storage tanks. Some of these chemicals, more properly called petrochemicals when on fire make gasoline fires look tame.
A lot of resources are used to prevent these petrochemicals from catching on fire with catastrophic results.
The plants do not shut down for a thunderstorm, but the changes in air temperature affect the process making it necessary to open and close valves to a varying degree to maintain the process.
Back in the old days before automation, an operator had to go into the maze of pipes to work these valves. My father in law told of many times when lightning would strike the tops of the towers and jump from tower to tower and from pipe to pipe rach right in front of the men who worked there. It did it so much that he never flinched at a lightning bolt, it was just part of what he did. These plants are well grounded.
A larger problem is corrosion or more properly called galvanic action. To prevent this, many miles of wire and hundreds of feet of ground rods are installed. These also serve to substantially ground the whole plant. Heavy green sheathed copper ground cables literally connect everything.
Then we went tp pneumatic operated valving letting operators open and close them from inside a control room, a vast improvement in lightning safety for the worker.
Today we use digital controls. There is one problem. Not only lightning but static electricity from storm clouds even when lightning isn't generated play havoc with digital controls.
Even the space shuttle delays launch if lightning is within ten miles, alcohol not withstanding. (I could not help that). NASA did have an unmanned rocket blow up when it penetrated a cloud containing lightning bolts. They gave that up for Lent.
A couple of years ago, my company installed a very elaborate system of lightning protection which looks like giant umbrella frames attached to the tops of the steel towers. Instead of fabric, the "umbrella" has a series of wires on it with a lot of "leaflets" attached to the wires. On top of the cooling towers are clothesline looking thigns with the same leaflets attached. I wish I could show you a photograph of how elaborate this is, but possession of camera inside the plant is a fireable offence. Something about trade secrets.
The idea is to have many points where charges can be released from the ground into the air or cloud which helps prevent the formation of a path to ground which the lightning follows.
Virtually all publid and large private building have lightning protection systems on them.
In the few years since it has been put up, the number of times that unit has had to shut down during an electrical storm because of digital instrument failure has dramatically decreased.
Whether or not it has prevented lightning strikes, we do not know, but it has saved a lot of money compared to the cost to install the system.
Itinerant salesman have sold "lightning protection" for hundreds of years. Most old farmhouses were equipped with lightning rods. Somehow people tend to dismiss the importance of lightning rods. Their purpose is not to prevent lightning from striking an object. What they do is provide a relative safe path for the lightning to follow while not traveling through you of something like the refrigerator motor, but more importantly preventing the lightning strike by allowing the dissipation of static charges which form the leader that lightning gollows to ground.
I got on a deer lease several years ago in West Texas. The area is home to some severe lightning storms. I built two very comfortable deer blinds on about twelve foot towers. One is on the tallest spot on the ranch. You can see for miles and it has the prettiest sunsets this side of Sawmill camp at Philmont. They are sort of like a grown up boys club house. With all the comforts of a camp, I spend many hours in them in quest of wild turkeys, javelina, blue quail and deer both white tail and mule, plus an inordinate amount of time reading, writing and just plain relaxing, an activity that is good for the soul.
Nothing will run me out of one faster than a thunderstorm approaching. Even so, I have been too close for comfort many times, thus my continuing quest for more knowledge about lightning.
My two blinds are both equipped with stainless steel lightning rods connected to very heavy wire attached to four copper ground rods driven into the ground. They are not to protect me from lightning while in them, they are so I won't have just a pile of splinters after a strike. With a point above that will allow the flow of electrons, it just might prevent a strike. There is evidence both have been struck many times. How many I do not know do I want to find out what it looks like when lightning strikes them.
One night around the campfire, one of the other hunters was badgering me about my lightning rods. He said "I ain't gonna sit in a blind with lightning rods on it during a storm". The old rancher laughed. I then told them the purpose was not so I could sit it out, but to prevent total destruction.
Then the rancher chimed in.
He told us he had seen a lot of lightning strikes on windmills. Being built of heavy steel, it usually did not do much damage. He once saw lightning strike one right in front of him and it blew water out from the pipe about a hundred feet in the air with LOTS of steam. He said it was an impressive sight. I'll bet it was.
He went on to tell us that many of his water wells now have electric pumps on them instead of windmills and he has a lot of lightning problems with them.
Invariably the wells are near fences and fences carry lightning strikes miles at a time. He said the best way to prevent problems (meaning a burned out electric pump motors) is to rig up about 60-70 feet of electric wire with a plug on it like on an electric stove and to unplug the thing and carry the wire and plug as far away from the power pole as possible.
He went on to tell us that the biggest problem he had with lightning was his cattle and sheep. When bad weather approaches they tend to do something and that something is mostly walking to somewhere. When they walk far enough they come to a fence. Then they just stand there by the fence wanting to get through it but can't. Lightning strikes the fence and often strikes the animals near the fence. He told us he looses about 10-15 head every year attributed to lightning strikes.
So how has all this modified my activities in the out of doors.
I follow the guidelines of those who have collected enough data to be knowledgeable. The Philmont guidelines are excellent. They are right on target with the est of advise.
This is one of the areas Philmonjt excels in. Bear safety, lightning safety and a few others. I think too often we take lightning safety more on the lines of we can't do anything about where lighting is going to strike so we can't do anything about getting struck by lightning. This is not the case. We can and should do all in our power to prevent a lightning accident. It's not just us we are responsible for but the lives of a bunch of youngsters who are just setting out in life and deserve the very best care we can give them.
I remember when teaching physical science in public school one day when a student asked what it means when you were outside and your hair started staning up on your arms and head. I asked when it happened and he told me “yesterday at band practice”. I told him that it meant that they were almost struck by lightning. He told me there was a thunderstorm a ways off but the band director said it was too far to worry about. Was he ever wrong!
This and incidents like it are what get people killed unnecessarily.
I am not going to second guess last Sundays event at all. I wasn’t there, I don’t know the facts. I have seen some good actions by advisors, some non actions by advisors and some really bad actions by advisors. It could have been any of the three. Enough said about that.
I'd like to suggest that if any of you use any technology that assists you in making these decisions, please share it.
I'll go first.
Last January I was introduced to the Weather Channel radar via cell phone by a welder working on a dock renovation project along the river at our plant. We are always on the lookout for thunderstorms approaching. Since my birthday was in the first part of February, I gave this $3.99 per month service to myself as a birthday present.
I can't tell you what a useful weather tool it is. With 4 clicks on my Verizon cell phone, I get to look at the weather radar updated at 5 min intervals. This very feature allows me to be able to evaluate thunderstorms and other weather phenomena and take a birds eye view. It has been an enlightening experience. What appears to the naked eye is vastly different from a satellite view and what is actually happening. With it I get to see the intensity of the thunderstorm, the direction and speed it is traveling.
On July 12th of this year I posted that Philmont was getting a pounding with rain. I used my cell phone radar to determine that. Dr. Bob and others posted about a week later about the rain that fell at Philmont that night. It’s not that I am “yanh, yanh, I told you so” but I’m illustrating the usefulness of the tool to predict what is coming your way in the form of bad weather.”
I live on the gulf coast less than 50 miles from where Hurricane Audrey killed 500 in 1957. Weather radar was just an infant in the military back then. Two years ago Hurricane Rita, a much stronger storm hit virtually the same location. The loss of life was less than 25 and those due to other than storm surge causes. Weather radar has been a very useful tool to look at what is happening right now and predict the near future events if you can use it from where you are on the trail. The technology is right around the corner.
Now sufice it to say, lighting can come from a very small cloud, but also the larger the TS, the more lightning it contains and the more it contains, the higher the strike probability and that is what it's all about. Strike probability on your head!.
The higher the probability, the sooner, the harder and faster you run to a safer location.
But don't get me wrong at all. The very best prevention is deciding early on when NOT to do what you planned on doing.
Life is like coming to a fork in the road. If you take the smart fork, you will do OK in life. Taking the dumb fork may be the last thing you remember.
John LeBlanc
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Received on Fri Aug 3 12:10:42 2007
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