It's lightning safety awareness week, and Severe Weather Team 11 has put together a list of helpful things you need to know about this dangerous but awe-inspiring phenomenon.
Facts about lightning:
Did you know that lightning is the number two severe weather killer in the United States behind flooding?
Lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees, five times hotter than the surface of the sun!
Lightning is electricity, caused by the build up and interaction of positive charges at the ground and negative charges in the bottom of a cloud.
There are two types of lightning, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground.
There is no such thing as “heat lightning.” What you are seeing is lightning from a distant thunderstorm where the storm is too far away to hear thunder.
Lightning can strike from 10 miles away from a thunderstorm and in rare cases, 50 miles.
Safety:
When you hear thunder, go indoors.
Never seek shelter under a tree as lightning tends to strike the tallest object first.
Steer clear of fences or wires.