lightning – serious backcountry hazard

A 21-year-old man John Cowan Jr. died when lightning struck near his tent in Colorado, the electric current traveling through the ground killing him.

Cowan had taken shelter in a tent with three others who suffered only minor injuries.

John Cowan Jr. and his three companions were hiking a trail near St. Peter’s Dome along Old Stage Road, about five miles west of the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. They had hiked to a lookout point which provides a panoramic view of the Front Range.

Vail Daily

Lightning is one of the greatest dangers in the wild. I was well aware of the risk when caught in a number of extreme lightning storms in the Sierra Nevada mountains this summer.

Early one morning on the John Muir Trail a menacing cloud climbed up the valley and enveloped me.

The storm began quickly. At one point the time between lightning flash and thunder clap was one second. Very conscious of the metal in my tent, I hid in the rain in low brush watching to see if it would be hit.

Overall, in the U.S. there are between 50 and 300 deaths per year from lightning strikes. …

Lightning bolts can strike up to 10 kilometers in front or behind a thunderstorm cell. This explains the classic “bolt from the blue” — which is a real entity.

Since thunder travels at the speed of sound and the lightning flash travels at the speed of light, you can estimate how far the strike was from you with some simple math. Divide the time in seconds between the flash and the sound of a thunder clap by five and you get approximately the number of miles from you to the strike. Five seconds from strike to sound, and there was 1 mile from you to the lightning bolt.

So, how does one avoid being a victim of lightning? Here are some tips:

• Do not be the tallest object in the area when there are storms around.

• Don’t be next to the tallest object in the area when there are storms around. Move to lower terrain and protection.

• Stay off ridge tops and mountaintops if there are storms around.

• Remember a storm up to 10 miles away can reach out and touch you.

• If you are caught in the mountains, stay low, even in a grove of trees if you have to.

• If you are in a group in a storm, spread out so that one strike will not injure several people at once.

Dr. Collins: Lightning can be a backcountry hazard | Idaho Statesman

I did not see any lighting strike during several storms this summer. But it was hairy.

Be careful out there.