Turns out, he was absolutely serious. We’ve watched lightning storms over the Gulf and Sarasota Bay every night. One of the cottages next door has a newly patched hole in its roof from a lightning strike last week. When we were sitting on the patio the other evening, storm watching, we were chased in by a lightning strike that sounded much too close for comfort. We learned later that it had blasted a downspout off the resort office, so it was too close indeed.
Florida leads the nation in lightning fatalities each year. The great majority of incidents occur in June/July/August. The area from Tampa to Titusville (around Cape Canaveral) is known as Lightning Alley. Floriday has averaged about a million and a half lightning strikes each year. That doesn't include the lightning flashes that don't hit the ground-- and there have been many more flashes that don't hit in the storms we've been watching.
The temperature of a lightning bolt is 50,000 degrees, nearly five times the heat of the sun’s surface. The average length of a cloud-to-ground lightning strike is 6 miles.
Stats about lightning strike victims:
98% were outside
89% were male
30% were males between the ages of 20-25
25% were standing under a tree
25% occurred on or near the water
So, young men out by a tree next to the lake, beware or be fried.
Tampa’s hockey team is named the Lightning, and now you know why.
The likelihood of a team from Florida becoming hockey champions is about the same as the chance of getting struck by lightning? The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2004, in their 12th year of existence.
Just sayin'.
Later, Gator. I'm off to the beach.
