Lightning Factoids
9 things you really didn’t need to know about lightning!
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The real reason you shouldn’t stand near a tree during a lightning storm is that it could explode sending out shrapnel and superheated napalm-like sap.
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A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface!
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Environment Canada analyzed 5 years of lightning strikes recording over 20 million bolts.Watch out for: Sable Island, Nova Scotia; Southwestern Ontario; Manitoba-Saskatchewan border and the Alberta foothills.
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The world record for most times struck by lightning is 7! Yeouch! After the third or fourth time you think he might have found another hobby!
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An Italian man was killed in his front yard by a lightning bolt, 30 years later his son was killed in the same spot, also by a bolt of lightning, 20 years after that his grandson was struck by a bolt of lightning in, you guessed it, the same spot.
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Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet or 8,000,000 times a day
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Lightning strikes the CN Tower an average of 75 times per year. Long copper strips run down the CN Tower to grounding rods buried below ground to prevent damage.
- In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats
- Oak trees are struck by lightning more often than any other tree. It has been theorized, this is one reason that the ancient Greeks considered oak trees sacred to Zeus, god of thunder and lightning.
