Don’t Mess With Florida’s Lightning

If you live in Florida, you know all to well about lightning. Florida is the nations top lightning state and with the most deaths from lightning each year. On average, lightning is responsible for more weather-related deaths in Florida than all other weather hazards combined, and Florida has the highest number of lightning casualties of all 50 states. Residents of Florida know that when it’s thundering out, it’s best to stay indoors and away from windows and power cords. Unfortunately though, there are still many that disregard mother natures warnings each year and become a victim.

Almost every time I’m out shooting local storm video for either The Weather Channel
(TWC), local networks, personal storm chases or stock video, I come across people taking chances of being hit by lightning. A lot of times when shooting for TWC, they are looking for umbrella shots, people dealing with the nasty weather conditions, like in parking lots and downtown districts. I’ll be setup in some local food store parking lot as the storm moves in and still see a hand full of people making the dash to the car from the building as cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning strikes are hitting close by to trees and power poles. A lot of the deaths each year are in parking lots, near trees and on beaches. I’m afraid one day I’ll be rolling tape when someone is hit because they won’t wait the storm out.

I have had several close calls with lightning here in Florida while chasing over the last 12 years, and I’m totally aware of how bad it is and how bad to can get. I love to shoot digital photography and video of lightning, but it requires you to get very close to the core of the storm and this increases the risk of being hit. Storm Chaser cars have taken hits from lightning in the past, and you can find some scary chase reports on the net about some of these close calls.

If you live in Florida or plan to visit our state during the wet season (May-August), be sure to play it safe when a thunderstorm is in the area. If you can hear thunder, your close enough to take a direct hit. Some of the prime locations to see the most lightning action daily is around the Tampa Bay area eastward along the I-4 route, northeast of Lake Okeechobee to the coastline, and much of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade counties (southeast Florida), along the east coast sea breeze. The daily summer time sea breeze convergence zones can produce several rounds of thunderstorms in a giving area everyday, and with a lot of lightning. So keep an eye on the towering cumulus and dark flat bases of developing storms. If you find yourself sitting under a distant thunderstorm’s anvil, you might be surprised by a quick flash and then crashing thunder as a “bolt from the blue” lightning strike comes out of the anvil and hits near by even when the storm itself is 15 miles away.