The other day my sister asked me what it was about Florida that created so many thunderstorms? I hadn’t really thought about it, and when I did I realized how much I had forgotten from high school science. It’s possible that I wasn’t paying attention, but that doesn’t sound right.
As it turns out, Florida out distances the rest of the United States when it comes to thunderstorms and keeps pace with the world’s maximum thunderstorm areas, equatorial Africa, near Lake Victoria, and the Amazon basin. Those two areas have thunderstorms virtually year-round, whereas Florida’s thunderstorms are more seasonal, from spring to late fall. The western half of the Florida peninsula counts more than 80 days of thunder and lightning in a given year. That’s almost three months!
We are just now kicking off the rainy season and thunderstorms are beginning to show up for the party. It’s been a particularly long dry spell, so the summer rains are welcome. The light show these powerful storms produce are beautiful, fascinating, and lethal. All too often people don’t respect its power and the results are deadly. The very thing that makes Florida such an attractive tourist destination…warm weather and lots of water, also makes it the lightning capital of the country.
Lightning is fascinating! It super heats the air to 50,000 degrees, resulting in the shockwave we call thunder. Lightning has positive and negative polarities, though most strikes come from the negative charge at the bottom of a cloud. Less than 5% come from the top of a thunderhead’s anvil, where the positive charges hang out, but when it does, the strike can be 10 times stronger than a negative one, making them more deadly and more destructive. They can hit the ground directly beneath the cloud, but mostly these positive charges are found on the outer edges of the cloud and can release their energy more than 10 miles away, resulting in the phenomenon known as, “a bolt from the blue”.
As magnificent as lightning is to watch, its power is deadly and no more so than in Florida. Last year 38 people were killed in the U.S. by lightning in 17 states, 9 of them in Florida. It happens because we don’t want to be inconvenienced by something we feel is unlikely to happen. Using a wide lens it probably is unlikely, but what if you were one of those 38 at the beach, hiking, enjoying a family picnic, under an umbrella, jet skiing, working in the yard, working construction, or simply walking to the car, because you thought it couldn’t happen to you, only it did.
We’ve all gotten caught outside at one time or another. I have to climb a flight of stairs to our apartment. Some days they can be steeper and longer than usual. I take a deep breath before grasping the rail that I use to drag myself up to the landing, but when Thor is throwing lightning bolts from the sky I can make the dash up those stairs like an athlete in training, never even brushing my hand against that metal rail, because that would be crazy!
We had our first thunderstorm of the season a few days ago. LeAnn, a neighbor, who lives downstairs, was so surprised by it that she wondered what in the world the folks upstairs from her were doing to cause such a racket! It wasn’t until she saw the flashes of light that it dawned on her what was happening. Us upstairs neighbors get blamed for everything!
Today more thunderstorms are predicted as the raining season gets underway, sharing the spotlight with hurricane season, but that’s another story.
You’re stories are always so well written and fun to read. Your mix of insightful and scientific information, with humor keeps your reader very interested. You would have made a great teacher.
Thank you. What a nice compliment.