The Weather Notebook: Listener Question: Driving in a Kansas Storm

Listener Question: Driving in a Kansas Storm
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Dave Thurlow, Host

Patricia Ottem from Atwood, KS listens to The Weather Notebook on KANZ in Garden City, KS. She called in with a weather question a little while ago, a question about a weather event very much a part of the Kansas land and skyscape, thunderstorms and lightning.

Boston Museum of Science's Van De Graaff generator during a show. A demonstrator inside the cage puts the "skin effect" to the test. www.mos.org

"I was traveling through Western Kansas during a severe thunderstorm and out here there's nothing and the lightning bolts were coming straight down all around us.

The question I had was should we have kept traveling, which is what we did or should we have stopped on the side of the road. It was a very very scary situation. There are no overpasses or very few and I didn't know what to do."

What you did was the right thing as far as the lightning goes. A car, moving or not, is a very safe place to be during a thunderstorm, because of something called the skin effect. It's not the tires or the frame that protects you, it's the metal structure of the car itself that acts like a protective covering, or a skin, that conducts electric current around the surface of the car and not inside it. Hence, it's safest when the windows are up.

So, if the lightning is the only problem keep driving. However, lightning usually comes with heavy rain or hail, and at some point you might have to pull over, simply because you can't see.

We appreciate your questions here at the Mount Washington Observatory. We'll even send you a Weather Notebook poster just for asking a question and a Weather Notebook mug if we answer your question on the air. So, give us a call at 1-888-RAIN-001.

Our show is funded by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.