Lightning Strike facts
While investigating facts about Lightning Strike Map and Lightning Strikes Near Me, I found out little known, but curios details like:
William Rankin who survived ejecting from his plane and the failure of his parachute, then spent 40 minutes falling through a several-miles-deep cumulonimbus cloud which featured lightning strikes, a hailstorm and what he described as the "feeling" of thunder.
how lightning strikes?
There are two types of lightning strikes - positive and negative. Negative accounts for 95% of lightning strikes, while positive accounts for 5%, and is much more powerful and dangerous, and is more likely to cause forest fires.
What lightning strikes the most?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what lightning strike do. Here are 50 of the best facts about Lightning Strike At Golf Tournament and Lightning Strike Motorcycle I managed to collect.
what lightning strikes?
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Two paragliders were sucked into a thunderstorm during practice. The updraft was so powerful that one pilot was sucked up to 19,000 feet and killed by a lightning strike. The pilot of the second glider passed out from the altitude, but woke up still airborne and covered in ice.
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A single lightning strike killed 323 reindeer in 2016 because the deer were clustered together and the electric current was able to travel through the ground and up the animals' legs
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About 'The never-ending lightning storm' in Venezuela. A lightning storm strikes most nights for eight months of every year, and has been flashing for thousands of years. Scientists still don't know why.
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John Lennon's comment 'More popular than Jesus' created a huge backlash in the US Bible belt, with one Texas radio station holding a large bonfire of Beatles albums only for a lightning bolt to strike its transmission tower the following day and sending the station temporarily off the air.
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A 17 year old girl fell 2 miles after the airplane she was in exploded due to a lightning strike. She managed to walk for 10 days until she was found by lumberjacks.
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Japanese researchers have discovered that administering an electrical shock that simulates a lightning strike can increase mushroom yields -- leading to more and bigger mushrooms.
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The Catholic church objected Lightning rods until a gunpowder explosion in Brescia caused by a lightning strike killed 3000.
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There is an area in Venezuela where lightning strikes 280 to 3,600 times an hour, 300 nights per year. It is called Relámpago del Catatumbo, or "the everlasting storm".
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There is a phenomenon in Venezuela called "Everlasting Storm" in which a lake hosts thousands of lightning strikes every hour 260 days per year
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Lightning comes in two kinds known as "positive" and "negative". Positive is the more destructive of the two but is believed to make up only 5% of lighting strikes.
Lightning Strike data charts
For your convenience take a look at Lightning Strike figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why lightning strikes trees?
You can easily fact check why lightning strikes the ground by examining the linked well-known sources.
A professor in Japan found that lightning strikes can double the size and amount of mushrooms in the wild. He decided to research this based on how consistently the myth of this phenomenon was found throughout the world. They suspect the electricity powers an enzyme that spurs growth.
Neanderthals didn't rely on lightning strikes to make fire, instead, they used chemistry, by putting manganese dioxide on wood to lower the temperature required to create a flame. - source
There are ghostly red lightning strikes 20 miles tall above thunderstorms called sprites. Long rumored, finally captured on video. - source
Harry Nilsson was worried about renting Flat 12 to the Who's drummer, Keith Moon, believing it was cursed because singer Cass Elliot had died there at age 32. Moon took the flat saying "lightning wouldn't strike twice." He died in the flat age 32, having taken an overdose of 32 pills
80% of Lightning Strike Victims are Male - source
When lightning strikes sand?
A British officer who fought in WW1 was struck by lightning 4 times in his lifetime. The third strike paralyzed him completely and eventually killed him. The fourth one struck his grave, shattering his tombstone.
How lightning strikes a person?
During the Apollo 12 mission, Ground Control feared an unexpected lightning strike during launch may have disabled the parachute, which would result in the crew's death upon reentry, but since there was no way to test it during the mission they didn't tell the crew.
In 1998, during a soccer game in the DR Congo a lightning strike killed all 11 members of a soccer team while everyone on the opposing team survived unscathed.
Two paragliders were sucked into a thunderstorm during practice. The updraft was so powerful that one pilot was sucked up to 19,000 feet and killed by a lightning strike. The pilot of the second glider passed out from the altitude, but woke up still airborne and covered in ice.
About Lake Maracaibo, a Place Where Lightning Strikes Almost 300 Days a Year, up to 1 million strikes a year.
Indigenous people of Mexico (Aztecs) believed that marigold has protective properties and used it for treatment of burns that resulted from lightning strike.
