My family has had a vacation/weekend house on a lake for a few years. One of my daughters has made our LSC's open water zones team. That meet is this weekend in Chattanooga. Weather is a threat - first race is late Friday, others are Saturday and Sunday mornings.
So my question is how you determine when to get out of the water or call off an event? In a pool, generally, if you hear thunder, you get out (and having had a tree in my yard get hit 10 minutes before the rain fell, I get why). However, on large bodies of water, the sound can carry so far, I'm wondering how you determine when you get out? During one weekend last Summer, we got out at the lakehouse when we heard thunder, but our neighbors just ignored it and kept on swimming. I'm guessing we were over cautious, and while I don't want to take chances, during this time of year, we can go on for hours upon hours hearing thunder, and never get hit. So I hate to waste any of the few days we get. Obviously, I'm also wondering what to expect for this weekend, primarily the Friday night race.
If you ever find the answer to your question, I'd love to hear it. I did a literature search one time and could find no deaths of lightning in water (some cases around water). I would think if you had a near miss, the lightning would go right through you as you are not grounded. It seems you would find more dead fish or sea animals in a lake after lightning. I guess nobody wants to mess with it, but I wonder if you are safer in water (I know, dumb).
Everything I have found is about pools, not lakes. And yes, the answers are confusing. There are all kinds of speculations about only running on the surface to running through you to ground if you are standing on the bottom. But dissipation is also a thing. An open body of water has so much volume that the lightning would be able to dissipate much more easily than a pool. Conversely, some things talk about how much more conducting wet skin is than dry skin, leading me to believe that the fear is that someone may be more likley to be struck actually out of the pool, but not dried off.
And like I said earlier, you can hear thunder from such a long way away that the rule of thumb about hearing it and getting out is worthless. Even if I did have a lightning detector, I wouldn't have any idea what would be a safe and reasonable distance. That's kind of what I was hoping to find here, but I'm guessing no one really knows.
Funny thing about the race this weekend. They moved it. The river is now a flood zone, so presumably the current is too strong. It will now be in an open body of water notably upstream of the city, on the other side of the dam. And they canceled tonight's event, and moved the others. There was to be a masters race, don't know about it.
If you ever find the answer to your question, I'd love to hear it. I did a literature search one time and could find no deaths of lightning in water (some cases around water). I would think if you had a near miss, the lightning would go right through you as you are not grounded. It seems you would find more dead fish or sea animals in a lake after lightning. I guess nobody wants to mess with it, but I wonder if you are safer in water (I know, dumb).
Everything I have found is about pools, not lakes. And yes, the answers are confusing. There are all kinds of speculations about only running on the surface to running through you to ground if you are standing on the bottom. But dissipation is also a thing. An open body of water has so much volume that the lightning would be able to dissipate much more easily than a pool. Conversely, some things talk about how much more conducting wet skin is than dry skin, leading me to believe that the fear is that someone may be more likley to be struck actually out of the pool, but not dried off.
And like I said earlier, you can hear thunder from such a long way away that the rule of thumb about hearing it and getting out is worthless. Even if I did have a lightning detector, I wouldn't have any idea what would be a safe and reasonable distance. That's kind of what I was hoping to find here, but I'm guessing no one really knows.
Funny thing about the race this weekend. They moved it. The river is now a flood zone, so presumably the current is too strong. It will now be in an open body of water notably upstream of the city, on the other side of the dam. And they canceled tonight's event, and moved the others. There was to be a masters race, don't know about it.
