Never 

Shower During a Thunderstorm. A
Physicist Explains Why
PHYSICS 18 August 2022 By JAMES RAWLINGS, THE CONVERSATION

(Emilija Manevska/Getty Images)

The Met O몭ce has issued several "yellow thunderstorm warnings" for the UK,
highlighting the potential for frequent lightning.

While your chance of getting struck by lightning is low, it's important to know how to
stay safe during a thunderstorm. Globally, about 24,000 people each year are killed by
lightning and another 240,000 are injured.

Most people are familiar with basic thunderstorm safety, such as avoiding standing
under trees or near a window, and not speaking on a corded phone (mobile phones
are safe).

But did you know you should avoid taking a shower, a bath, or washing the dishes
during a thunderstorm?

To understand why, you 몭rst need to know a bit about how thunderstorms and
lightning work.

Two basic elements cause a thunderstorm to thrive: moisture and rising warm air,
which of course go hand in hand with summertime. The high temperatures and
humidity create large amounts of moist air that rises into the atmosphere, where it
humidity create large amounts of moist air that rises into the atmosphere, where it
can form into a thunderstorm.

Clouds contain millions of water and ice droplets and the interaction of these is what
leads to lightning generation. The rising water drops collide with the falling ice drops,
passing them a negative charge and leaving themselves with a positive charge.

In a thunderstorm, clouds act as enormous Van de Graa몭 generators, separating the

positive and negative charges to create massive charge separations inside the clouds.

As thunderclouds move over the Earth, they generate an opposite charge in the
ground, and this is what attracts a lighting strike towards the ground. The
thunderstorm wants to balance its charges, and it does this by discharging between
positive and negative regions.

The path of this discharge is usually the one of least resistance, so things that are
more conductive (like metal) are more likely to be struck during a storm.

The most useful advice for a thunderstorm is: When thunder roars, go indoors.
However, this does not mean you are completely safe from the storm. There are
some activities inside that can be almost as risky as staying outside in the storm.

Path of least resistance
Unless you're sitting in a bath outside or showering in the rain, you're incredibly
unlikely to be struck by lightning. But if lightning strikes your house, the electricity
would follow the path of least resistance to the ground.

Things such as metal wires or water in your pipes provide a convenient conductive
path for the electricity to follow to the ground.

The shower provides both of those things (water and metal), making it an ideal path
for the electricity to take.

It could turn that nice relaxing shower into something much less relaxing. The US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly encourage people to avoid all
water-based activities during a thunderstorm – even the washing up – to reduce your
risk of a strike.

There are other risks to look out for during a thunderstorm. One that may not seem
obvious is leaning on a concrete wall. While concrete itself isn't that conductive, if it
has been reinforced with metal beams (called "rebar"), these can provide a conductive
path for the lightning.
Also avoid using anything plugged into an electrical outlet (computers, TVs, washing
machines, dishwashers) as all of these can provide pathways for the lightning strike to
take.

As a rule of thumb, if you can hear thunder in the distance, then you're close enough
to the storm to have lightning reach you, even if there is no rain.

Lightning strikes can happen as far as ten miles away from the parent storm.

Typically, half an hour after hearing that 몭nal thunderclap is a safe time to venture
back into the shower. Thunderstorms usually like to save a big one for the end, and
you don't want to end up part of the 몭reworks!

James Rawlings, Physics Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons

license. Read the original article.

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