18 June 2004

Lightning and hail season

Forrest M. Mims III

Have you ever been caught in a hail storm?

Having lived in Texas, Florida, Alabama, Colorado and New Mexico, I've experienced many hail storms. But none were as memorable as the one experienced while hiking up a ridge on the slopes of Sandia Mountain in New Mexico on a summer day.

That afternoon the sky suddenly became nearly dark and a strange hissing sound could be heard in the distance. Off to the north a curtain of white appeared in the sky.

As the diffuse white wall rushed closer, the hissing sound grew louder. When it reached the ridge line where I stood, the strange sound became a deafening roar. Suddenly millions of white balls the size of marbles were raining from the dark sky and bouncing from the rocks below. Seconds later I was pelted by a thick swarm of stinging hailstones. Fortunately, a little pinon tree was nearby, and I quickly dove under its branches to wait out the hail.

Years ago a cowboy friend of mine was caught in a bad hail storm on a remote ranch in Big Bend country. He said that he pulled the saddle from his horse and held it over his head and shoulders as he crouched down for protection. When I asked about his horse, he replied, "That hail hurt too much to worry about my horse! He was on his own!"

Some of the recent spring storms across the United States have been accompanied by powerful wind, lots of hail and dazzling lightning displays. A new crop of children is learning firsthand about the awesome nature of their power.

When a newspaper published some of my lightning photographs and a column about a major local storm that was accompanied by a tornado, seventeen second and third grade students in a bilingual class at a local elementary school responded with a package of letters describing their personal storm experiences.

Their teacher, Mrs. Moravec, wrote, "Many of my students came to school full of stories about the tornado, the hail and all the details." She noted that her students struggled with some of the words in my column.

It was quite a treat to read the letters from Mrs. Moravec's class. Some were written in both English and Spanish. Many employed rather creative ways of spelling unfamiliar words. Jose wrote that he was struck by a ball of ice when "hell was falling down from the sky." Thomas, Jennifer and Andy illustrated their letters with wonderful sketches of jagged lightning. Dalma, Faustino, Samantha and Ivan drew scary pictures of tornadoes.

As these students now know, storms are fascinating to watch. But they can also be terrifying and even deadly. Some children whose homes were flooded during an historic flood in my county in 1998 are now traumatized by a heavy rain, especially if it is accompanied by lightning and thunder.

When my brother Milo and I were kids in Colorado, we experienced many big hail storms. One left a layer of hail nearly a foot deep at our house in Colorado Springs. Another pummeled Milo with hail an inch across when he was playing baseball.

We used to count the seconds between the flash of a lightning bolt and the crash of thunder. Sound travels around 1,000 feet in a second, and there are 5,280 feet in a mile. So dividing the time in seconds by five gives the approximate distance in miles to the bolt.

Perhaps if kids who are terrified by lightning tried this exercise their fear might be relieved. But after I suggested this to one parent, it occurred to me that the child might be upset even more should he realize how close some of the lightning bolts really are.

While excessive fear of storms is not good, every child should be raised to respect their power. According to the National Weather Service, each year from 1992 to 1994 lightning killed an average of 51 people and injured 345 in the United States. Tornadoes killed 47 each year and injured 1,114.

While there were only two recorded instances of deaths caused by hail during the entire twentieth century, from 1992 to 1994 hail caused an average of 43 reported injuries each year. Some of these deaths and injuries could have been prevented if the victims had taken proper precautions.

A tornado that struck downtown Fort Worth, Texas, several years ago was accompanied by softball-sized hail. During the hail storm, a man left the safety of a building and attempted to reach his car. He was killed by a large hailstone traveling an estimated 100 miles per hour.

Forrest M. Mims III and his science are featured online at http://www.forrestmims.org/.

This feature was originally published in Forrest Mims's weekly science column in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, Seguin, Texas. The column is written for a general audience.