Lightning and Biking
 

Hey all,

back into biking and just started comuting last week - 4 days already -

Curious... Ya see, I live in Tampa Florida and in 2 months the lightening will come - and it will terrorize us daily - (we are lightening capital of north america) -

Some say 'no worries' you are on rubber tires - do you belive that is true ?

What do you do in lightening season ?

If you get struck by lightning on a bike, the tires aren't going to help.

Central Florida is the lighting strike capital of North America AND Florida claims to be "The Sunshine State". Anyone see a conflict here?

the tires will not do any good, that's for sure.
Your best bet is to not be the tallest object around, so If you are in a densely populated neighborhood or a downtown area you should be okay.

keep in mind though that you will be riding an extremely good metal conductor and you will be taller than all the other pedestrians. If there are a lot of other local cyclists who manage to ride in the weather I would say your fine, but lightning scares the crap out of me so I would probably avoid it

Just listen to Homer Simpson from the "Wonder Bat" episode: " It all started last year during a terrible thunderstorm, when I locked myself out of the house. Sheltering myself with a large piece of sheet metal, I ran for cover under the tallest tree I could find!"

hehe... the irony is not lost on us either -

but come june the lightening comes - 4:40 daily - you can almost set you watch to it - and Nasty ? - wow - as an IT guy I have back up/pre configged routers, switches and modems -

this is my first season where I am trying to commute - I am going down to the LBS and hitting them with this question as well -

Fritz

Ya may want to go with carbon and stay away from steel frames. :D

Or maybe a bamboo frame.

A recumbent would keep you closer to the ground. Or you could mount a lightening rod on a long flexible metal pole that sticks up, and that would keep you from getting hit directly :D.

and your check to me for 4 g's is in the mail ?

smile.

I just ordered a Trek 7.6 and it has a carbon fork -

that just leaves my 'junk' unprotected

OUCH

Joking aside. You can be struck by lightning on a bicycle. The most risk is open areas where you may be the tallest thing around. Second most risk is being NEAR the tallest thing around.

I have a few "refuges" mapped out on my path for this reason. Last July I sheltered under a foot bridge for about 1/2 an hour as a really violant T-storm passed. I can't recall though, what about taking shelter under a tree, if necassary in otherwise flat terrain? No good?

Um...don't most bridges cross flowing water? Let's see - lots of rain, low spot, natural water drainage? Nope, don't see how that could go wrong:rolleyes:

A thunderstorm is one of the very few weather events I will stop and seek shelter during my commute. Here is a good site with Lightning Safety for Campers and Hikers.

They also cross other, paved foot paths, grass, etc-as in this case. No water and not a low spot. In addition, it's abutted with thick concrete supports, etc. I was nice and dry.

Lightning travels thousands of feet through air...a damned poor conductor. Why would it have problems with traveling through an inch or so of rubber...another poor conductor?

Lightning can't hurt you if you are in a car or a house or in a metal cage but those are Faraday cages which direct the discharge away from the inside of the cage to the ground. On a bike you have only one side of the Faraday cages. You probably need all sides to protect you. You could surround yourself with a cube of bicycles - one on each side - and that might give you protection or you could surround yourself with some kind of 'enclosure' like a body of sheet metal. But you'd need more power to carry it so an internal combustion engine would be the best way to do that. Wait a minute...that's a car:eek::D

Honestly, the best way to deal with lightning is to take shelter. Trees aren't good, building are. A bridge will do. I know I made fun of mjw16 for it...sorry:o However do be very careful if you are under a bridge in a rain storm. We had a child swept away and killed here in Colorado a year or so ago because he got caught in a flash flood.

Ok, here we go. Solitary trees in an otherwise flat landscape or to be avoided, however, groups or similarly sized trees are safe. Makes sense. I was never sure of that one...

AVOID: Avoid water. Avoid all metallic objects. Avoid the high ground. Avoid solitary tall trees. Avoid close contact with others - spread out 15-20 ft. apart. Avoid contact with dissimilar objects (water & land; boat & land; rock & ground; tree & ground). Avoid open spaces.

SEEK: Seek clumps of shrubs or trees of uniform height. Seek ditches, trenches or the low ground. Seek a low, crouching position with feet together with hands on ears to minimize acoujstic shock from thunder.

KEEP: Keep a high level of safety awareness for thirty minutes after the last observed lightning or thunder.

cyccommute: no worries.

ABSOLUTELY NOT. Taking shelter under the most likely thing to be struck is exactly what you are not supposed to do. The "educational video" way to do it is to crouch down in an open area, proffering your buttocks to they sky gods, presumably making them self conscious and less likely to go through with it.

Also, carbon conducts electricity too, and if a tree or a telephone pole is adequate ground for a bolt of lightning I wouldn't put much faith in a bamboo frame either.

I never used to be afraid of lightning, until I was making my way home after sunset one night in August with frequent flashes to the East when the brother of someone I went to high school with was struck and killed outside his house the previous day. It made for a surreal commute.

For the last 4 years, I commute from Ft Myers to Cape Coral just about every day with a planned evening departure around 5:30pm or so (11.3 miles).....During the summer, I watch the radar, starting about 4:00pm....I can usually judge when the cells will pass, and schedule my departure accordingly....sometimes I leave early and sometimes I hold up for a while...on my route home, I have identified several places where I could duck into, in worst case situations.....occasionally, I estimate the cell's speed incorrectly and do get caught out. I just continue on, having yet to use one of my "duck-in" spots during a storm. If I felt really threatened, then I would certainly use one of them and wait out the worst part. This works for me......

My standard line is that lightning and I came to an agreement years ago. I ignore it and it ignores me. So far, we have both been keeping our respective sides of the agreement.

Yellowbeard: assuming their were other, taller objects nearby (trees, buildings, etc) as was the case, wouldn't this then be relatively safe? I've also sheltered under other, larger bridges during heavy T-Storms (largely for the rain protection), and it occured to me; I have yet to see evidence of lightening strikes under these bridges. I've seen plenty of trees, houses, etc but never the pavement under a bridge.

Having lived in Tampa, the typical summer weather pattern is sunshine, then a 15 minute thunderstorm at 5 PM (like clockwork), then sunshine.

Bridges are a better option than most others because if they are actual engineered bridges such as traffic underpasses, they are grounded. If you are under the bridge, but not in the water, you're unlikely to get hit as the bridge will conduct the electricity away. Flash flooding is a legitimate concern though.

(That's according to NOAA. They could be wrong of course. I've not tested this myself.)

If you're in a region where the lightening is as predictable as clockwork then just plan your ride time accordingly. Seek shelter, hang out in a coffee shop or bike shop or library until the daily event passes.

Anyone who thinks tires will save them is completely idiotic. Think about it this way; the only thing that electricity cares about is the insulation it has to jump across. That inch of rubber actually is LESS insulation than the inch of air over your head. It doesn't matter if it's under you, you're still providing a path to ground. It wouldn't matter if you were standing on top of a 10 foot pile of rubber.

Contrary to popular belief, the reason it's safe to be in a car in a lightning storm has NOTHING to do with the tires - in fact most car tires conduct electricity. It's because you're inside a metal box, otherwise known as a Faraday cage (OK, a bad one due to the windows, but still...), which conducts the electricity away from the occupants.

Also, getting under a tree is about the WORST thing you can do. You're much better off standing in the middle of a field than under a tree. That tree is more likely to get hit by lightning than you are, and if it does, the lighting can arc from the branches or trunk to you, or it can even come up through the ground, up one leg and out the other, giving you enough of a kick to hurt you. I've seen several cases on TV where people under trees were killed.

The tree can also explode due to the sap inside flash boiling. If that happens, you're standing next to a bomb with pointy wood shrapnel.

Personally I ride through thunderstorms, but the thunderstorms we get in Michigan are puny things compared to what Florida gets.

good info cyccommute - thanks -

- hundreds and hundreds of strikes per hour - and the storms come up fast - no bridges to hide under - it surely IS beautiful but REALLy freakin' dangerous.

Fritz