I'd planned a massive Saturday morning swim today at the Y, but I'm here on the couch blogging because there's a thunderstorm in progress. A few years ago the Y started closing the pool (indoors) during lightning. After all these years. All of a sudden.
How many of you practice at facilities where the pool closes down in lightning storms?
Is there a good reason for this?
Have we all been risking our lives for the last 50 years?
Just wondering!
What cracks me up is that the guards will clear the pool at our health center, but then allow people to use the locker room showers! And according to all these cited documents, that's just as likely a place to get your hair straightened! :confused:
And what happens if someone does get hit, and the guards need to call 911? You can't use the land line in the pool office!
I think this calls for a Mythbusters episode!
-Rick
What a great idea! Why don't you send them an e-mail suggesting it? I am sure that they will figure out some cool way to totally fry some fish, even if they have to add copious quantities of an elecytolyte to the water to make it a better conductor, completely insulate the pool so that the charge can't go directly to ground, and copper-plate the fish to make them better conductors...
Our team started swimming in the afternoons at a new pool this past Jan. Last night we had our first thunder/lightning storm since we started there. I don't swim in the afternoons so this morning I asked what the guards did and what the team did. They stayed in.
Now the other pool we have that we will be going back to June 1st is a bubbled in pool. In that pool, we do get out and have to go in the girls locker room which is a concrete bunker-like building (it is a former Army post built in the 1940's)
National Athletic Trainers’ Association Position Statement: Lightning Safety for Athletics and Recreation
Journal of Athletic Training 2000;35(4):471–477
www.nata.org/.../lightning.pdf
Thanks, Anna Lea! I now know that "Humans are primarily salt minerals in an aqueous solution."
Nothing like a little self-knowledge to keep up grounded.
Which is also a good idea, I suspect, during a lightning storm.
Apparently not one death recorded. Here's another article on the topic.
Thanks for the great links. I just sent them to the aquatics director at our Y, not that I suspect they will overturn conventional wisdom that is now so entrenched as to have become impacted, like a wisdom tooth, or worse.
I'm surprised at how close this poll ended up being. I really thought that indoor pools closing during thunder/lightning storms would be in the minority. I learned a lot from reading the responses here - and of course that only made me more confused.
Thanks for participating!
I distinctly remember boys from my outdoor-pool-using age-group team sneaking off to the parking lot and giving the dumpster a good rumbling when we thought coach or the life-guards needed to hear some "thunder." So I guess all the swim I'm sadly missing now is payback for all the swim I gladly missed in junior high!
Apparently not one death recorded. Here's another article on the topic.
Those are great links and I think the physics is sound that you are safer in the pool than out.My worry is that now the life guards will be required to say and do the following-"A thunderstorm has been spotted in this area,for your protection you must stay in the pool and we are locking the lockers and doors so you can't go anywhere unsafe.Thank you for your cooperation."
