Woman is lucky to be alive after hair-raising day at the beach

Karyn Sandiford and her friends were enjoying a nice sunny day at the beach in Lytham St. Annes, United Kingdom, on July 4, 2021, when dark clouds gathered. Before Sandiford and her pals heard thunder, they felt a tingling sensation of static electricity on their arms and Sandiford's hair began to stand on end.

"Bit of static on the beach," she joked in the three-second video which went viral on Facebook. Rain and thunder followed, and so the friends made the long trek back to their cars onshore.

Upon returning home, she researched similar events and realized she'd had a close call with one of nature's most effective killers.

Milliseconds before a lightning strike, negative ions from a cloud reach down toward the Earth, causing a positive charge to reach up from multiple points on the ground, typically from metal objects or high points. These are called "positive streamers."

'Bit of static on the beach,' Karyn Sandiford joked in the 3-second video that went viral. (Karyn Sandiford via Storyful)

The negative ions moving down from the cloud, called a "stepped leader," pause and change direction if they can't find a path to meet up with a positive streamer. This process can repeat 10,000 times over 1/20th of a second until a connection is made, and has only recently been caught on film by extremely high-speed cameras. Once a channel is established, the lightning strike occurs, with positive ions moving up the channel, sometimes several times in rapid succession.

In extremely rare cases, people can be injured when serving as a positive streamer, even if the lightning connects through a different channel. In rare cases, positive streamers can be captured on film using long-exposure photographs.

This illustration shows how lightning reaches out and eventually makes contact with the ground.

Meteorologists believe that Sandiford was part of a rarely documented field of static charge that had built up prior to the establishment of positive streamers.

Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist for the Finland-based company Vaisala, which tracks global lightning strikes among other weather data, said of this event, "In incidents like this, there is a lot of electric charge in the atmosphere ... I wouldn't call these upward streamers, per se, as those occur when the stepped leader is approaching the ground."

In an interview with AccuWeather, Sandiford described the moments that the static began. "It was a fascination for the first, sort of, couple of moments. But then when we realized that, 'Actually, this is an electrical storm, I think we should really get off the beach,' we high-tailed it out of there," she said. "We were surrounded by water, so if it would have struck, I don't think I'd be sitting here now, I really don't."

Just eight weeks prior to Sandiford's close call, a 9-year-old boy was killed by lightning on a soccer field 2 miles from that beach, on May 11, 2021.

Lightning searches for a connection to the ground in this slow-motion video in Texas in August 2020.

Despite the ubiquity of cellphones, the static phenomenon that Sandiford experienced has only been documented a handful of times. A woman in Colorado took a picture of her hair standing on end during a hike in 2019 and a couple narrowly avoided getting struck by lightning in Australia in 2010 after taking a similar photo.

Meteorologists aren't sure why the static is such a rarely documented event, as many people are struck by lightning with no discernible warning.

John Jensenius, a retired meteorologist who served as NOAA's specialist on lightning safety said, "I don't think we know the answer to that question. It's obviously related to the strength of the electrical charge aloft and the induced charge on the ground."

Hopefully, Jensenius added, people are heeding advice to stay safe and are not getting this close, or are quickly fleeing the area when feeling the static, instead of documenting the event.

The static charges associated with a thunderstorm can't be seen with the naked eye, although St. Elmo's Fire, seen on planes and boats, may be manifestations of a similar buildup of static before a storm.

Another famous photo of a similar static event during a thunderstorm was taken in California in 1975 and featured Michael McQuilken, who told the story of the picture in a 2013 blog post.

"On that infamous day, my brothers Sean and Jeff, my sister Mary and her friend Margie, and I were on our way to the top of Moro Rock, a rounded exfoliation dome and one of the favorite attractions in the park. The sky was overcast with patches of dark clouds, and there was light, intermittent rain."

"Shortly after we reached the top and were enjoying the view with about six other visitors, someone noticed that our hair was standing on end. At the time, we thought this was humorous ... I raised my right hand into the air and the ring I had on began to buzz so loudly that everyone could hear it."

After the tragedy in 1975, a sign was erected warning of dangerous lightning on Moro Rock in California.

Moments later, on the trek down the mountain, Michael's brother Sean was struck by lightning, along with several other people at various points along the mountain face; one was killed. Michael was knocked to the ground. Sean was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for six months. The lightning continued down a metal railing to terminate by causing a stone drinking fountain to explode in the parking lot.

"When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!" (NOAA)

In the moment of the strike, Michael reported feeling "timeless and weightless" and said, "Ever since the experience of what appeared to be a perception of time slowing down where I felt like I was weightless and surrounded by white light, I have wondered how we process our sense of time. I feel that this experience helped to set up the sequence of events that led to my discipline of meditation."

So, what should you do if you're outside and believe you're about to be struck by lightning? Although the National Weather Service (NWS) stopped recommending using a crouching position in 2008, saying that there is no safe position that will protect someone from a lightning strike, the NWS website still says that you should not lie flat on the ground. Better yet, heed an even wiser piece of advice so you don't get in that situation: "When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors."

Editor's note: Many of our readers responded to our Facebook post with similar stories of their own. Melinda L. experienced tingling and static sensation just prior to lightning hitting the water outside her house. "It felt like a bomb hit the house," she said. Ray O. experienced hair standing on end and tingling outside a bowling alley, walked to a nearby hotdog stand, and lightning struck a telephone pole where they had been standing. Горан М. was standing in an open field when he felt the static electricity and ran home while two lightning strikes struck nearby.

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