The Weather Notebook: When Lightning Strikes

When Lightning Strikes
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.

Some students of lightning say there is nothing compared to being on top of a mountain when lightning strikes. For Janet Blomicka, that could well be an understatement. She works at Long Tom Lookout, which is 9,000 feet up in the Salmon-Challis National Forest near North Fork, Idaho. She shared her experience last summer of such an event.

You watch the cloud build, you know, from blue sky to the first little puff and watch the vertical development and an anvil and then you start seeing your first strikes and you're waiting to see which direction is it going to move? And we're just like, "Oh my God, it's coming! And we're not only gonna be in it's path; we're gonna be it!"

And it was like being in a room with a bunch of strobe lights. Just the flashy blue, consistent light. And you could feel the electrical charge building up because the hairs on your arms will start to stand up and tingle. I just thought, "You know it's just a matter of time before this lookout just gets slammed,"

It was intense. It was really intense. And then when they go off. When you're in them like that and the adrenaline rushes. And then it starts dancing across the ridges and coming right at you, you know you just start getting really excited.

When it hits, it's so quick. I mean, there's a sudden flash of white light, at the same time there's a crack of a whip and a loud boom and you know that you've been hit. And within ten minutes you turn in seven fires. I don't know, I guess it's the lightning rush that I really live for up here.

That's Janet Blomicka who watches for fires on Long Tom Lookout in Idaho. Special thanks to correspondent Jeff Rice for that tape. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory and is supported by Subaru.