OT. Lightning Smacks a Car in Kansas.

[Dean Hoffman]

No one hurt.

There was a story years ago of lightning hitting a biker traveling down I-80 in Nebraska. He was supposedly buried with his helmet.

[hubops]

Yowsa ! I wonder if it deafened them at all ?

The couple times it has hit close to my house - the thunder clap shook the house - a picture came off the wall once ..

Thanks for sharing. John T.

[Marilyn Manson]

My buddy was driving through a storm, with the driver's window open about 3". His son and my son (both young teenagers at the time) were with him. He doesn't really know how close the bolt came, but they all said that it was the brightest and loudest thing they had ever experienced.

Once they all calmed down, he realized that the left side of his face felt warm. He looked in the mirror and saw that part his face was "sunburned". He had bright red 3" wide stripe across the side of his face, including the top half of his ear. When he dropped my son off the boys were still excited and yelling "It was crazy! Look at his face! Look at his face!"

[Clare Snyder]

Kid brother was hauling a load of class B motorhomes across Kansas with his old Volvo semi and was struck by lightning. Direct hit caused almost $20000 in damage to electronics in his rig and required partial repaint of several vans due to asphalt splatter from the strike. I think he said it also roasted one rear tire - - -

[gfretwell]

A car is a pretty good faraday cage. Other than needing to change your shorts, lightning strikes are usually are pretty benign to the passengers. The car not so much. One of our friends had his car hit and it was over $6000 in smoking electronics. It was almost a "total" and the car looked pristine. The "electrical" was pretty much OK but everything hooked to the ECU and the entertainment system was trashed. It probably came in the GPS/Onstar antenna and all of that stuff is wired together. I bet a newer car like I got the kids would be worse.

With his helmet or in his helmet?

[gfretwell]

We call that "Flash/Bang" here. The time between the flash and the bang is too close to count.

[Dean Hoffman]

In, supposedly.

[micky]

Wow.

If it's the metal roof and sides that protect you, I wonder how that applies to a cloth-top convertible!

[rbowman]

A guy on a bike was killed in eastern Montana about 20 years ago. The tallest thing out there is a prairie dog taking a stretch. Not a good place to be in a thunderstorm on a bike.

[Larry]

You might want to have cockpit weather installed in your Le Baron.

[TimR]

Years ago, back when "groups" was on nn or rn, we had a long thread about lightning hitting cars. I would guess this was between 1986 and 1990.

Some people held that the Faraday cage was the only influence. Others believed strongly that cars are not struck nearly as often as they should given the number that are out there, and believed that the rounded shape or some factor prevented a stepped leader from making contact.

[Tekkie©]

On Mon, 05 Jul 2021 18:06:46 -0400, [e-mail] posted for all of us to digest...

Was his name Crispy?