- The temperature of a lighting bolt is 50,000 degrees.
Did you read All The Lightning Facts You Never Knew: Part One? Follow the link if you haven’t, because this is part two.
Lighting doesn’t just come down from above, it also streaks up high into the sky.This was discovered in the 1930s but finally confirmed in pictures. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why this happens but some have theories.
Catatumbo lighting is unique. Methane gas bubbles up from rotting vegetation
in swamps and rivers. Lake Maracaibo’s oil fields also produce methane gas as a byproduct, which also accumulates above the marshes.
Methane is lighter than air and as it rises up into the clouds it feeds the storm, creating brighter and more colorful lightning.
Catatumbo leaps from cloud to cloud and is much more powerful than cloud to ground lightning. It ‘s seen up to 200 nights a year and for up to 10 hours a night in areas.
Catatumbo is visible up to 200 miles out to sea and sailors used it for navigation. It’s called the “Maracaibo lighthouse.”
The most dangerous place during a thunderstorm is a wide open place, including any expanse of water.
It’s not a good idea to stand near a tree during a
thunderstorm. (If a tree is struck, the heat can turn tree sap into superheated steam, making the tree explode in a shower of potentially deadly splinters.)
Lighting can travel down telephone lines.
If your hair stands up during a lighting/thunderstorm, this is a scary warning sign you’re in danger. If this happens to you, quickly squat down on the balls of your feet.
A lightning flash contains up to 200,000 amps and it takes just 1/10th of an amp to kill a person.
Most of the energy goes around a person when they’re struck, not through them.
The charge goes through the moisture on the skin and down to the ground, not through vital organs.
“Lichtenberg marks” are scars left on a person’s body after being struck.
A strike can cause cardiac arrest, but it’s rare.
The majority of people survive lightning injury but live with nervous system damage like mobility problems or memory loss.
Protect yourself from a strike by seeking shelter. If you’re outside, get into an
enclosed vehicle.
It’s the metal body of a car that provides protection if it’s struck during a thunder/lightning storm.
Every commercial aircraft gets hit during a thunderstorm once a year.
Besides being struck by a bolt, the biggest threat to life is when lighting starts a fire.
One single storm unleashed up to 5,000 lighting strikes, starting 1,000 individual fires in the 2008 fires of California. Dozens of homes were destroyed during the fires.
In a lightning prone area, living in a house among trees puts you at high risk.
Fires destroy but can also have a positive effect on landscape and work together with nature. Parts of nature depend on fire to renew life as fires clear ground and encourage regrowth of plants. Some plants species have evolved to collimate places made bare post-fire and some seeds need the fire to germinate.
The temperature of a lighting bolt is 50,000 degrees.
Yes, you read that right, 50,000 degrees. Hard to imagine anything could be this hot. What’s your favorite new fun fact?
Hits: 0
