A scuba diving friend in Europe inquires in a recent social-media post: "Can you scuba dive during a thunderstorm? This question arose a while back when I wanted to go scuba diving and we found ourselves suddenly in the middle of a thunderstorm. At this moment we where still in the car and decided to cancel the dive and go back home. But what if the thunderstorm had hit while we were in the water? Water is one of the best conduits for electricity..."
U.S. Dive Travel owner John Hessburg replies: You made a wise decision, amigo del mar, to cancel at that moment. Salt water conducts electrical charge super-efficiently. Therefore, a heavy lightning strike -- even 100 meters away -- can debilitate or kill virtually any living thing in that circle of vulnerability. When we were divemastering in Puget Sound (Washington state USA) we had a firm policy with the new Open Water students -- that any time lightning was visible within 2-4 miles of our cove, we would cancel the scuba class immediately. That's because it's common for lightning strikes to be generated at steep oblique angles over considerable distances. And that arc of electrical potential can connect planet to sky in an astonishing fraction of a second...
Just to give you a rough idea of how much deadly energy is packed into a large lightning strike -- a few years back I was in a 2-man ocean kayak with my best buddy Bonz, paddling back across a 3-mile channel in Lake Superior from the Apostle Islands to Bayfield Wisconsin, when a sudden violent thunderstorm engulfed us as we floated like a puny cork in this vast inland sea. Two-meter waves of frigid water were crashing across the bow of our ocean kayak & the adrenaline was flowing like a faucet. Then -- Bam -- lightning struck two times about a kilometer away, crashing down onto the 25-meter metal masts of large sailboats moored across the channel. The raw power of those impacts was SO great that it actually "shook the water" & transmitted a sickening thud to our plastic kayak hull. Really grateful for that non-conductive plastic kayak & plastic paddles! Not ashamed to say it was a close-to-terrifying experience -- & I love thunderstorms like I love fine art.
Another time on the summit plateau of Mount Rainier in western Washington state, our team of 4 men was approaching the crater rim at approx 4,270 meters elevation (14,000 ft) one misty morning. I told my climbing team to take immediate shelter down on a shallow shelf of a glacial cravasse when a thunderstorm suddenly swept across the summit dome. We ducked down just in the nick of time... Two times lightning struck within 50 meters of our crouched position & the bolt's percussive force, the shock wave of transmitted energy, drilled small craters the size of bushel baskets into the glacier ice, & literally flattened us onto our backpacks.
Ergo, good brother, lightning deserves our reverent & prudent respect at all times, whether on land or in the water. Those bolts of lightning carry fierce amounts of destructive energy.
Good rule of thumb -- NEVER MESS WITH MAMA NATURE ! She can bite back, big time....
U.S. Dive Travel owner John Hessburg replies: You made a wise decision, amigo del mar, to cancel at that moment. Salt water conducts electrical charge super-efficiently. Therefore, a heavy lightning strike -- even 100 meters away -- can debilitate or kill virtually any living thing in that circle of vulnerability. When we were divemastering in Puget Sound (Washington state USA) we had a firm policy with the new Open Water students -- that any time lightning was visible within 2-4 miles of our cove, we would cancel the scuba class immediately. That's because it's common for lightning strikes to be generated at steep oblique angles over considerable distances. And that arc of electrical potential can connect planet to sky in an astonishing fraction of a second...
Just to give you a rough idea of how much deadly energy is packed into a large lightning strike -- a few years back I was in a 2-man ocean kayak with my best buddy Bonz, paddling back across a 3-mile channel in Lake Superior from the Apostle Islands to Bayfield Wisconsin, when a sudden violent thunderstorm engulfed us as we floated like a puny cork in this vast inland sea. Two-meter waves of frigid water were crashing across the bow of our ocean kayak & the adrenaline was flowing like a faucet. Then -- Bam -- lightning struck two times about a kilometer away, crashing down onto the 25-meter metal masts of large sailboats moored across the channel. The raw power of those impacts was SO great that it actually "shook the water" & transmitted a sickening thud to our plastic kayak hull. Really grateful for that non-conductive plastic kayak & plastic paddles! Not ashamed to say it was a close-to-terrifying experience -- & I love thunderstorms like I love fine art.
Another time on the summit plateau of Mount Rainier in western Washington state, our team of 4 men was approaching the crater rim at approx 4,270 meters elevation (14,000 ft) one misty morning. I told my climbing team to take immediate shelter down on a shallow shelf of a glacial cravasse when a thunderstorm suddenly swept across the summit dome. We ducked down just in the nick of time... Two times lightning struck within 50 meters of our crouched position & the bolt's percussive force, the shock wave of transmitted energy, drilled small craters the size of bushel baskets into the glacier ice, & literally flattened us onto our backpacks.
Ergo, good brother, lightning deserves our reverent & prudent respect at all times, whether on land or in the water. Those bolts of lightning carry fierce amounts of destructive energy.
Good rule of thumb -- NEVER MESS WITH MAMA NATURE ! She can bite back, big time....
RSS Feed