From rmg3@access2.digex.net Wed Jul  1 14:57:25 EDT 1998

In article <1998070118120500.OAA28504@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
RickM666 <rickm666@aol.com> wrote:
>Having just returned  from a noon run in which I was caught in a thunderstorm, 
>I wondered if anyone had any scientific opinions on what sort of  a target for
>lightning is presented by a runner proceeding at, say, 7 minutes per mile. 

  About the same as 10 minutes per mile, walking, or standing.  If you're
out in a clear flat area, you're a target.  If you're next to a tree,
it's a target and you are too close to a target.  Same rules apply to
runners as others w.r.t. lightning.  If the lightning starts up, head
for shelter now.  If no shelter is close enough to reach before the 
lighting strokes get close, head for the lowest ground you can find
and get down.

  'Close' is, unfortunately, a very broad range.  Count the seconds
between stroke and thunder.  5 seconds is 1 mile.  If you're at
less than 5 seconds, get shelter _immediately_.  Since lightning
strokes routinely hit 5-10 miles apart, even out to 25-50 seconds you're
still too close for confidence (and at that point, the thunder may be 
hard to hear).  

  That outer range may sound extreme.  On the other hand, people have
been hit by lightning while the causative storm was 30 km away.  Not
as conservative as you might think, therefore.  Since I grew up in
tornado alley, I am very cautious of thunderstorms.  Very interested,
but cautious.

-- 
Robert Grumbine rmg3@access.digex.net http://www.access.digex.net/~rmg3/
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much 
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they 
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences 

See the Red Cross or National Weather Service pages for more on lightning safety.
If you do take reasonable precautions about lightning, you have very little to worry about. And the reasonable precautions are easy: get inside a well-built building and stay off conductors (metal pipes and wires) which reach outside. If you can't get to a building, get inside a metal body car. (Note these two are not contradictory. The thing to avoid is being part of a _path_ between the lightning and the earth. If you're _inside_ a conductor, as in the car, then you're not part of a path. If you're _holding_ a conductor, then you may represent a shorter path to the earth then the thing you're holding and then could be in danger.)

I'm advocating a 10 mile (if you're confident of hearing faint thunder) or 30 minute (- 30 minutes since the last thunder you did hear, if you're not certain of hearing/seeing distant lightning) buffer zone between you and the edge of the storm. Some of the discussion focussed on this being so large as to prevent you from getting your run in for that day. My first concern in running is health, and getting hit by lightning is not healthy, so no problem deciding what to do there.

But even if you're committed to running 'regardless', lightning is not a major interruption. Storms with lightning are primarily thunderstorms (surprise), _and_ these storms are not, individually, long-lived. 90 minutes is a _long_ thunderstorm. Add 30 minutes either side, and for a _long_ storm, you might lose 2.5 hours of the day for your run. Fine, run at 7:30 instead of 5:00, or vice versa. Thunderstorms are most common in the late afternoon, so just shift your running to early afternoon or early evening and you're set. (Recall too that thunderstorms are most common in summer, when the sun is out the longest so you can adjust your schedule most easily.)

There was also some ill-considered statistical reasoning. I wouldn't go in to it except the line of thought seemed popular among otherwise knowledgable people. The mistaken reasoning was to say, "Only about 100 people per year are killed by lightning. That's awfully rare, so I'll get my run in regardless of the lightning and take my chances with the lightning." The error is simple -- Almost nobody, at any given time, is in a position where they _could_ be hit by lightning. This month, for example, I could not possibly have been hit by lightning, regardless of what I did outside, since there wasn't any lightning to be hit by. The situation is analogous to getting killed by an alligator. Very few people are killed by alligators. The person reasoning above is concluding (effectively) that it is ok to go to a swamp and throw rocks at an alligator, since very few people are killed by alligators. If there is, or recently has been, lightning in your area, then someone is throwing rocks at a nearby alligator. Time to take some safety measures.