Lightning Safety
Lightning strikes the United States about 25 million times a year. Although most lightning occurs in the summer, people can be struck at any time of year. Lightning kills about 20 people in the United States each year, and hundreds more are severely injured. The following resources will offer information to help stay safe when lightning is present during University events.
Event Organizers
If you are organizing an event, be sure to create a lightning safety plan, which at a minimum should include the following elements.
- A pre-determination of when you will activate a lightning delay.
- A communication plan to notify event participants.
- How to contact emergency medical services and the location/s of the nearest emergency response equipment (medical kits, AED, transport means, qualified personnel, etc.) to use if a person is injured by lightning.
- The appointment/designation of a Weather Monitor for the event.
- The Weather Monitor will observe the local weather using at least one of the following services: on-site observation, television news coverage, the Internet, mobile apps, cable and satellite weather programming, commercial services, NOAA weather radio, National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts, NWS Advisories, Watches, Warnings, Hazardous Weather Outlooks (HWO), and reported nearby lightning strikes.
- The Weather Monitor for the event will notify the responsible event official of the status of any thunderstorm that may threaten the safety of the event.
Determining your distance from a lightning strike
Use the resources identified above. Specifically, “My Lightning Tracker” smartphone app.
If no smartphone is available then you can count the number of seconds from the time you see the flash until you hear thunder. Divide the number of seconds by five to get the approximate distance in miles to the lightning bolt/strike.
For example, if you see lightning and it takes 15 seconds before you hear the thunder, then the lightning is approximately 3 miles away from you (15 divided by 5).