Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Spring Storms
We had ourselves a nice storm today here in Houston. Again, having never really spent anytime in a location that gets so much weather like this, it’s hard for me to gauge if this is a big storm to others or just something too many dismiss around here.
The weather stations, (via internet), gave out several warnings: High winds, flooding, thunderstorms, deadly lightning storms and tornado watches.
Today was the first time I’ve seen a storm in Houston but did not see anybody out walking around, jogging, etc. as if it were a sunny day. Even the mailman was late.
It’s gone away now but for a good two hours that lightning was nasty. NASTY! It cracked and ripped the air apart at least once every 30 seconds to a minute. And as usual, I followed all the rules and stayed inside, pretty much away from the windows, shut things down, did not run any water and laid here and held the cat.
I’ve mentioned this before and I gather that some people out there think it’s funny when I point out that you do not go outside when it is thundering and lightning. You simply do not.
Of course, there are still people out there who refuse to heed the warning about deadly lightning, sticking with the “100 people in the U.S. per year” statistics and consider themselves safe.
Really.
Two Men Struck By Lightning In Katy
Katy, TX is just down the road from here. (And I don’t mean, “just down the road from here” in TX terms, I mean “just down the road from here” in the terms everone else in the U.S. understands.) Two construction workers were at a site working and ignoring all the warnings from the NWS to get their butts indoors. In fact, there were several workers outside at this site at the time. They were walking on some rebar and lightning struck 50 yards away.
Rebar is the rustly looking metal...the rods (if I’m not mistaken) that you’ll see in cement if you breakt it apart.
The report says that the lightning energized the ground underneath the men. Let me teach this again: Lightning, the streaks we see from sky to ground...actually comes from the ground UP. It appears to strike down from the clouds but in reality, the initial charge is coming from the ground. Considering this, it’s a damn good idea NOT TO WALK ON METAL in a lightning storm, let alone be outside in the first place.
The guys are extremely lucky as they apparently had only minor injuries and have already been released from the hospital. Lucky. Very, very lucky.
Lightning may only kill 100 people per year in the U.S. but people really need to start taking it a little more seriously than they do. Just like with driving a car or operating machinery or anything else that can cause injury or death, use safety precautions because you never know when it could happen to you. And in the case of lightning, as the articles says, they had no warning whatsoever. Well. They did. They just didn’t pay attention because they didn’t take it seriously enough.
