OHV Riding when a Thunderstorm Happens!
Thinking about the 1971 “The Doors” hit may give you some happiness while riding your OHV on the mountain trails, but that bliss can be short lived, as any major storm, specifically thunderstorms, can be very dangerous. It is not the time to be the macho type in the music video.
Chances are you’ve experienced a few thunderstorms, up close and personal in a tent, or while riding and otherwise enjoying the outdoors.
Thunderstorms all produce lightning in varying amounts … sometimes there’s just an odd flash or two … other times, the storms produce lightning nearly continuously, with lots of flashes to ground. Typically there are 5-10 times as many intra-cloud flashes as cloud-to-ground flashes. It’s the flashes from the cloud-to-ground (CG flashes) that create problems. CG flashes typically are only a small percentage of the total flashes produced by a thunderstorm; most lightning stays within the clouds. But it only takes one CG flash to get you! Lightning takes place because there is a build up of a differential in electrical charge between the earth and the clouds moving overhead or between clouds. When the difference gets large enough, electricity arcs between clouds or from the clouds to the ground to equalize the charge and lightning is born. A lightning bolt can instantly heat its channel through the air to as much as 54,000°F.
Lightning strikes with tremendous force, enough to split and destroy mature trees in a single strike. As we well know, lightning can cause fires in the forest, especially in the Winom-Frazier where there is a lot fuel on the ground (See Forest Resiliency Project).
Lightning will seek the path of least resistance, usually arcing from the highest point on the ground, so you want to make sure YOU are not the highest point or are not near the highest point. The human body is basically a bag of salty water, which conducts electricity a lot better than air, so the lightning will often try to travel through you to reach the ground.
Not all the lightning you see is cloud-to-ground. There are a number of different kinds of cloud-to-cloud lightning that will illuminate the sky but won’t necessarily have the distinctive streaks we normally associate with lightning. You may see spider lightning that usually shows up as long, horizontal flashes on the underside of clouds. For more on fascinating lightning types, check out Lighting Types.
It’s pretty unlikely that you’ll ever be struck by lightning. Scientists cannot make accurate predictions of when and where lightning will strike or how often, so for all practical purposes, it looks pretty random. Nevertheless, more people are killed by lightning year in and year out than by any other weather phenomenon; typically on the order of 100 people or so annually in the United States. Furthermore, lightning does not have to kill you to create major problems in your life. Several hundred people are affected by lightning in the U.S. every year, short of being killed. To get some idea of the non-fatal hazards of lightning from a medical point of view, check out this site and/or this one. Being struck is no joke and can affect you adversely for the rest of your life.
The first lightning flashes will coincide roughly with the time that rain begins; in the mountains, a lot of that rain might evaporate before it reaches the ground. Whether it reaches the surface or not, precipitating thunderstorms are a threat to produce lightning! During mountain thunderstorms, the peaks can be struck frequently and are no place for any wise hiker/camper to be.
Although lightning is seemingly random, there are some things you can do to minimize your risks if you are caught in the open during a thunderstorm:
- Avoid being the tallest object around : Riding an OHV, specifically a motorcycle may make YOU the tallest object. Get as low as you can, which may mean stopping and getting off and away from your OHV. Don’t lie prone on the ground. Go into a squat, instead. If you’re wearing a backpack, get it off and seek the best shelter you can find … the idea is not that the backpack attracts lightning, but rather to facilitate getting to shelter quickly. Obviously, standing on a mountaintop is asking for major-league trouble!
- It also is unwise to be near the tallest object around, like an isolated tree. Sheltering from the rain under a tree is often a factor in people being struck. Depressions in the rock, or shallow caves don’t offer much protection from lightning on a mountaintop. Your best protection is to get down from the peaks as quickly as possible.
- There is no “warning sign” that will tell you reliably that lightning is about to strike; don’t depend on having your hair stand on end, or whatever. The first sign of a CG may be the flash itself. Of course, if your hair does stand on end, then you should take steps to protect yourself immediately! If no suitable shelter is available, see points #1 and #2, above.
- The time from the flash to the thunder is a rough measure of how distant the lightning is. If you see a flash and count the seconds, five seconds corresponds to about a mile. However, there is no distance from a thunderstorm that is absolutely safe! If you can see the lightning, then you are under some threat. CGs can occasionally jump out of a thunderstorm and strike the ground miles away, seemingly “out of the blue.” What is currently being advocated is the “30-30” rule: take shelter if the time from seeing a flash to the time you hear thunder is 30 seconds or less, and don’t resume activities until 30 minutes have elapsed from the last lightning and thunder.
- You do not have to be directly hit by the lightning to be affected. Lightning can travel along the ground from a nearby strike to you. It can also jump from nearby objects that are struck.
- Avoid being near fence lines and power lines that lead into areas where lightning is occurring. A flash can travel along the wires and jump to you.
- Go/Call for medical help immediately if someone is struck! In the meantime, administer CPR to any lightning strike victims if their heart has stopped and they have stopped breathing. If they are simply not conscious, treat for shock (not electrical shock!).
- Riding on the trail during a thunderstorm is not a wise thing to do if you are exposed. If you’re in a forest, there are many trees about and your chances of being hit by a CG are not very high … but along an exposed trail, you need to get as low as possible, again short of lying prone on the ground (see #1, above). Regrettably, shallow caves and overhanging rocks provide only shelter from the rain … they do not increase your lightning safety by very much in otherwise exposed mountain locations. During a thunderstorm, it is likely that campers will want to stay in their tents or RV’s. A tent may provide shelter from the rain, but if you lie down in the tent, you are at risk from ground currents, which might well prefer to run through you from head to foot (or the other way around) as you lie in contact with the ground. Such a current flow would probably stop your heart. If you are standing up, but with your feet spread apart, a potential (voltage) difference could exist between your feet, encouraging current to run up one leg and down the other. It might not stop your heart, but it probably would be very unpleasant, given what it would be likely to pass through on its way! Hence, when sheltering from the rain in tents, you need to be taking steps to reduce the danger from ground currents. I don’t know to what extent air mattresses and foam pads protect you while lying down through insulating your contact points with the ground.
The usual rules apply if you have chosen a campsite in an exposed location, where your tents are the highest objects nearby. If you have chosen your campsite unwisely in terms of lightning safety and a thunderstorm threatens, immediately abandon such a campsite and all your gear, and move to a better location for lightning protection. Campsites in among many trees are probably all right, in the sense that the chances of your particular location being struck are pretty low. However, you could still be unlucky, and the risk from ground currents and secondary strikes from lightning hitting nearby trees remains. If there is no better shelter (e.g., a motor vehicle) nearby than your tent, you will probably be lucky enough not to be struck, but there is no doubt that a substantial risk is associated with riding out a thunderstorm in a tent. Note that non-metallic tent frames don’t mean much of a difference from metal frames, either, in terms of the threat. The same goes for various forms of “insulation” between the tent and the ground … if a lightning flash has passed through thousands of feet of air (a terrific insulator), a few cm of rubber or whatever isn’t going to make any difference that matters.
Being inside a vehicle places you inside a metallic “cage”, and the current of a lightning strike tends to go through that frame rather than through you (the so-called “Faraday Cage” effect). It is not the rubber tires that protect you!
This info has been adjusted from most the info available that deals with hiking/horse back riding, not OHV’s and RV’s.