July 13th Colorado Rocky Mountain Front Range Lightning Thunderstorms

July 13th, 2011, Boulder County, Colorado. What a great night. It started with an incredible sunset with the clouds starting to boil into some fantastic lightning storms. This was a really great night for shooting lightning because the rain was very light where I was positioned. Lots of Cloud to ground and cloud to cloud. The night before was a really crazy wet night. As they say if you don’t first succeed… try and try again. So back to a spot I was the night before to work on a composition I had in my mind with this tree Silhouette. This is a really cool tree on the Boulder County St. Vrain Green Belt. I was able to circle this tree as the storm circled around me.

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Lightning Fact: The negatively charged bottom part of the storm sends out an invisible charge toward the ground. When the charge gets close to the ground, it is attracted by all the positively charged objects, and a channel develops. The subsequent electrical transfer in the channel is lightning.

Lightning Fact: Most lightning deaths and injuries in the United States occur during the summer months, when the combination of lightning and outdoor activities reaches a peak. People involved in activities such as boating, swimming, fishing, bicycling, golfing, jogging, walking, hiking, camping, or working outdoors all need to take the appropriate actions in a timely manner when thunderstorms approach.

Lightning Fact: If your hair stands up in a storm, it could be a bad sign that positive charges are rising through you, reaching toward the negatively charged part of the storm. That’s not a good sign! Your best bet is to get yourself immediately indoors.

Lightning Fact: A house or other substantial building offers the best protection from lightning. For a shelter to provide protection from lightning, it must contain a mechanism for conducting the electrical current from the point of contact to the ground. These mechanisms may be on the outside of the structure, may be contained within the walls of the structure, or may be a combination of the two.

On the outside, lightning can travel along the outer shell of the building or may follow metal gutters and downspouts to the ground. Inside a structure, lightning can follow conductors such as the electrical wiring, plumbing, and telephone lines to the ground.

Lightning Fact: Lightning is not confined to thunderstorms. It’s been seen in volcanic eruptions, extremely intense forest fires, surface nuclear detonations, heavy snowstorms, and in large hurricanes.

Lightning Fact: The odds of becoming a lightning victim in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000. The odds of being struck in your lifetime is 1 in 3,000.