Originally Posted by ItsJustMe

I ride in flat, open countryside in thunderstorms. IMO, the danger is almost nil where I am; even during thunderstorms there are not that many lightning bolts per minute. In Florida or Texas I might be a little more concerned.

From what I understand, lightning takes a few seconds to establish an ionized path before the main strike. If you're moving, the odds are almost nonexistant for an ionized path to form from you and for you to still be near it when the lightning strikes.

My house stands in the middle of an open area, and has a steel rod on top of it (antenna) 35 feet off the ground, and it's been in every thunderstorm for the 15 years since we built it, and it's never gotten hit. Lightning has hit within a few dozen feet of the house, but it's never gotten directly hit, even though it's very elevated.

From my amateur radio days, I remember that an antenna tower, metal and grounded, will only attract lightning within a cone formed by drawing a 45 degree line down from its peak (circle on the ground is a radius of its height). A 100 foot tower will attract lightning that would have hit the ground within 100 feet of it anyway.

What are my odds, 6 feet off the ground and moving? I'm only likely to get hit if the lightning would have hit within a 6 foot radius circle of me anyway, probably less due to the movement. What are the odds during a thunderstorm of any randomly chosen 12 foot diameter circle getting hit? That should be your odds. Personally I don't worry about it.

That said, I'm not going to stand under a tree, that greatly increases my odds (more like a 100 foot diameter circle instead of 12 foot, or about 70x more likely to get hit).