Lightning Casualties Hair Stood on End Before Strike

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Lightning strikes some unfortunate people with hair on end.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381677/How-know-youre-struck-lightning-Picture-brothers-hair-end-minutes-before.html

--Once in South Dakota on my uncles farm I had to take cover underneath a large Case Tractor on a high flat place with a large Ice Berg type hail bearing Cumulonimbus moving in rapidly, and the air getting cool and sill. Twenty feet away near an irrigations ditch, an iron fence post was quietly saying brrrrzzzzurrrp pop, snap etc. Then I remembered the old stories about cowpokes hurriedly burying or hiding gun, spurs, coins etc. under their tent, when a prairie storm was moving in.  Well my hair never did stand up, luckily, and probably that is because of the large ferromagnetic mass of the tractor, but I am just guessing. Then, a large bolt hit the fence post and almost at the same time golf ball hails started piling up fast. I did get just a little wet but was otherwise unharmed. If I had not come in the tractor, which had no cab, I would have been SOL.

""I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand an end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine.""
William Shakespeare 1564  -  1616

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[TerraHertz]

Wow, you were lucky the the fence post had more 'pointyness' than the tractor, because under a vehicle is NOT a safe place. If the bolt hit the tractor, the current is going to go tractor-you-ground. The rubber wheels don't conduct as well as you. Short air gaps are not an obstacle.

Pointyness really is the key, because in high field strengths it's the points on conductive objects where corona ionization of the air occurs, since the point causes an intensified field strength at the tip.
The resulting charged air moves in the electric field, and can form 'leader' conductive paths. The leader(s) coming down from the cloud eventually meet a leader coming up from the ground, and suddenly a lot of current flows. Boom!