Positive lightning?

Got caught on the jogging trail earlier this evening by a surprise thunderstorm, half a mile away from the car. What was just a smallish dark cloud grew within minutes to a sizeable thunderhead, sending down wicked cloud-to-ground bolts of lightning, some of them a good 45 degrees out ahead of the cloud where the sun was still shining.

Quickening the pace the realization hit that the Oklahomilist was the tallest object within a quarter mile, and rain was starting to fall. The last flash was less than a quarter mile away. The only solution was to take "refuge" in a small depression off to the side of the trail that runs above the Creek Turnpike. Alas its only compensating virtue was that I was no longer the tallest object in the field. The rain became a cold downpour, and then dime-sized hail began to mix with the wind and the rain. Visibility went to a matter of a foot or so as the wind kicked up to 50 or 60 mph.

One cannot help but feel a bit foolish, tucked into a fetal curl, hands above the eyes in a bid to keep the hailstones out, while ice cold rain plunges your body temperature from a sweaty 100 degrees to who knows what. Dime-sized hail is nothing special in Oklahoma, but it's been years since I've had to contend with it one-on-one.

And yet the sting of the hail, the swirl of the wind, the cold wash of the rain was nothing compared to thoughts of the lightning, especially since earlier in the day we had come across this "Bizarre Lightning" story from the Arizona Republic. Lightning is static electricity but it makes a difference whether the strike is a "positive" or "negative" bolt.

A top National Weather Service expert in Phoenix will investigate a powerful lightning strike that "sounded like dynamite exploding," damaging 13 homes in central Mesa on Tuesday afternoon.

"This is beyond the norm," meteorologist David Runyan said. "It's bizarre. It intrigues us. We will seek some means to understand it a little more."

The lightning bolt drawing all the attention caused extensive damage to a home in the 2000 block of East Seventh Avenue, near Broadway and Gilbert roads, as its charge sped to other structures through underground wiring and wet soil.
...
On Wednesday, Runyan, of the Weather Service, said he would visit the site after Randall Cerveny, an assistant professor of meteorology at Arizona State University, indicated it could have been hit by a positive strike, which is extremely rare and powerful.

Scientists say positive strikes deliver much more voltage than the negative bolts that occur 90 to 95 percent of the time in storms across the country.

Positive strikes also tend to spread their potent charge over a larger area.

"They tend to be much more powerful," Cerveny said. "We don't know much about them because they are so rare."

How far the strike spreads depends on such factors as how much underground wiring is in the area and if the ground is wet.

Well, the ground all around was wet, and provoked a great deal of thought whether that small dip in the hill would offer any protection against a positive lightning bolt. The 90 to 95 percent odds against it provided little solace with the booming all around. (What did provide solace was a a steady stream of "Hail Marys" and "Our Fathers" from yours truly, along with a specific promise to Jesus to clean up a few messy loose ends ASAP.)

The Lord is kind. The storm passed after ten minutes, the sun came out and the squishy, waterlogged trek to the car began. The cell phone still hasn't quite returned to normal but all things considered it was quite an experience with little harm done. What a marvelous world it is when we expose ourselves to it.

Still can't help thinking about that "positive lightning" however:

Mesa firefighters, who have seen the aftermath of other lightning strikes over the years, said they have never witnessed anything like the effects of the Seventh Avenue strike. They believe the strike, recorded at 4:45 p.m., first hit the home, owned by Al Ogawa and Richard McTevia, and spread its powerful charge underground.

The force's intense heat exploded underground wires, including television cable, near the home, erupted through the soil and spewed dirt and debris like volcanic ash against homes, trees and parked vehicles. Areas around brass doorknobs and locks were scorched.

Makes you wonder, what if something happened to "reverse the charges" on the earth's polarity so that 90 to 95 percent of the lightning strikes were positive instead of negative? The all-electric, wired-in connectivity we enjoy in our homes might become instead potential death traps during inclement weather.

Now that's a comforting thought to end the day!