Nine myths and facts about lightning

[Sporkman]

Lightning kills more people (about 58) each year than tornadoes or hurricanes. In fact, it is the most underrated weather hazard, according to the National Weather Service. Only floods are routinely responsible for more deaths than lightning...

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/the_conscious_consumer/143/nine-myths-and-facts-about-lightning.html

[RiceMonster]

The only thing I wasn't aware of is that tornados and hurricanes kill less people each year than lightning.

[aeiah]

i wasnt aware of the counting distance for estimating how close the lighting was. i mean, i knew about it, i just didnt know you had to divide by 5 to get the miles

[fatality_uk]

Re Tornadoes:


The United States averages about 1,200 tornadoes per year. The Netherlands has the highest average number of recorded tornadoes per area of any country (more than 20, or 0.0013 per sq mi (0.00048 per km²), annually),[citation needed] followed by the UK (around 33, or 0.00035 per sq mi (0.00013 per km²), per year),[3][4] but most are small and cause minor damage. In absolute number of events, ignoring area, the UK experiences more tornadoes than any other European country, excluding waterspouts.[1]

[ubunterooster]

They forgot to add: lightning can hit 40 feet away from your house and still fry a Surge protected PC

[chiliman]

I didnt see anything about the safety postion when stuck in a severe thunder storm. The safest way if you are stuck outside in a severe thunder storm is to crouch down make yourself as small as possible without your butt sitting on the ground with elbows on your knees and hands on your head, so that if you are hit by lightning it should pass your vital organs and maybe not kill you.

And if you can hear thunder its close enough to strike.

Also i always unplug my pc if im going to be out of the house for a few days or i think there might be a thunder storm later in the day.

Also another thing is, you might unlpug your power cable but dont forget about your ethernet wire, lightning can go though that and fry your ethernet adapter. Its happened to me before.

[Shazaam]

And for those of us that still have dialup, unplug our phone cable from the pc during a storm.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Also another thing is, you might unplug your power cable but don't forget about your Ethernet wire, lightning can go though that and fry your Ethernet adapter. Its happened to me before.

I learned that the hard way. The NIC was also built into the motherboard on my computer. Fortunately, all I had to do was install a NIC card. The rest of the motherboard was OK.