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Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Thunder and Lightning very very frightning


Postby TheWildHaggis » Mon Jun 06, 2022 10:29 am

folks,

Last week I was walking the munros of the white mounth, weather forcast for was a dry and warm day. Parked the car at Loch Muick car park (by the way a new extension of the car park is now open). Walked up to Lochnagar via the pap (slight hail shower at the top) dropped down to the sandy loch, this is where I planned to camp but it was a midgy infested spot so decided to climb out of the corrie and camp around the Cairn Sagirt Beg. Whilst walking between the top of the Stuic and Sagirt Beg, I was becoming more and more aware of the towering dark clouds gathering overhead and thinking I was in for a downpour, decided to make camp, got the tent out of the bag when a flash of lightning and thunder with no noticeable time difference between, started to hail heavily, really heavily, as a friend once said, the "tide was coming down". More thunder followed. At this point I had two choices, Stay put, setup the tent weather out the storm, or run like scared coward off the hill. I took option 2. Tent was hastily stuffed into the rucksack trying my best to keep the tent poles low to the ground for fear of creating a lightning condutor. Set off at pace down towards the Dubh Loch. All the while trying to recall from memory "what to do in a lightning storm,

Lots more thunder and lightning on the way down, very heavy rain and hail. The paths along the Dubh Loch were like like rivers, the waters fall at Eagle rocks was doing a good impression of Niagara falls. My waterproofs were doing a less than sterling job. Some more flashes of lightning but lots more thunder kept me motivated to keep the pace up, without my walking poles and the now muddy flooded state of the paths, coupled with my haste I was doing a lot of stumbling.

Decided to go along the east path of Loch Muick, as the path hugs the hillside more than the land rover track on the opposite, but also meant I would not have to cross the 1km of open ground at the lock end. Got back to the car park without incident.

But what should I have done? What would you have done? Did I over react? Any thoughts?
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Girl Outdoors » Mon Jun 06, 2022 10:56 am

No you most definitely did not over react! I'll make no excuses lightening freaks me out big time!
My threshold for fear and indeed taking precautions to avoid getting into such situations is much much lower than most people and probably would irritate others with a more cavalier approach, one reason that I often walk alone. I'll easily abandon a walk or cut it short when others carry on. Nothing irritates me more than the line "nothing to worry about...its miles away" Well fact is lightening can easily travel many miles ahead of the storm front.

The first thing I always do is assess the weather as to the risk of a situation developing in the first place. As I said I'm cautious. However, I have to accept that I might get it wrong and be stuck up there when the weather changes as you were. The thing with legging it down is that one is still exposed to lightening in open spaces for a considerable time anyway. I obviously am not familiar with the exact environs around where you were pitching your tent so an absolute answer is impossible. But from what you describe I would probably descended very quickly for a short distance and found a ravine/depression and then adopted the crouching position with feet close together that is recommended if caught out in electrical storms while trembling and hyperventilating! Bohemian Rhapsody might destress the situation though!
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby walkingpoles » Mon Jun 06, 2022 2:38 pm

I am pretty sure you took a very sensible decision.

I might have dumped the tent and the poles before running to safety (The worst should be over in 30min).

As I understand lightnings, poles are as dangerous (if not more) in a backpack as they are in ones hand (happy to stand corrected). I reckon the worst you can do is to strap them outside the backpack, with the pointy bits pointing upwards like a lightning rod.

Number one advise is to get off ridges immediately. I don't know whether you had options to sit it out somewhere instead of to keep walking. The last time I got surprised by a thunderstorm, we sat it out in a forest, not directly under a tree, hunched to a hillside, ice axes and poles lying some distance away. I once met a person who lives to tell that he got struck by a lightning on top of a mountain. Fortunately he wasn't on his own. Needed CPR and got serious burns (and broken rips from the CPR). It's really a bad thing to happen.
Last edited by walkingpoles on Mon Jun 06, 2022 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby ohsosky » Mon Jun 06, 2022 2:41 pm

TheWildHaggis wrote:folks,

Last week I was walking the munros of the white mounth, weather forcast for was a dry and warm day. Parked the car at Loch Muick car park (by the way a new extension of the car park is now open). Walked up to Lochnagar via the pap (slight hail shower at the top) dropped down to the sandy loch, this is where I planned to camp but it was a midgy infested spot so decided to climb out of the corrie and camp around the Cairn Sagirt Beg. Whilst walking between the top of the Stuic and Sagirt Beg, I was becoming more and more aware of the towering dark clouds gathering overhead and thinking I was in for a downpour, decided to make camp, got the tent out of the bag when a flash of lightning and thunder with no noticeable time difference between, started to hail heavily, really heavily, as a friend once said, the "tide was coming down". More thunder followed. At this point I had two choices, Stay put, setup the tent weather out the storm, or run like scared coward off the hill. I took option 2. Tent was hastily stuffed into the rucksack trying my best to keep the tent poles low to the ground for fear of creating a lightning condutor. Set off at pace down towards the Dubh Loch. All the while trying to recall from memory "what to do in a lightning storm,

Lots more thunder and lightning on the way down, very heavy rain and hail. The paths along the Dubh Loch were like like rivers, the waters fall at Eagle rocks was doing a good impression of Niagara falls. My waterproofs were doing a less than sterling job. Some more flashes of lightning but lots more thunder kept me motivated to keep the pace up, without my walking poles and the now muddy flooded state of the paths, coupled with my haste I was doing a lot of stumbling.

Decided to go along the east path of Loch Muick, as the path hugs the hillside more than the land rover track on the opposite, but also meant I would not have to cross the 1km of open ground at the lock end. Got back to the car park without incident.

But what should I have done? What would you have done? Did I over react? Any thoughts?


Don’t think you overreacted, stormy weather is really out of my comfort zone too and if I see the big grumpy clouds I will usually make a run for it too if I can.

I think you are supposed to make yourself very small if you do get caught out. Lightning looks for the closest path to the ground if I remember right so you are supposed to sit on your bum with your legs pulled in, preferably on your bag.

Mountaineering Scot has good advice:

https://www.mountaineering.scot/safety-and-skills/essential-skills/weather-conditions/lightning
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby al78 » Mon Jun 06, 2022 6:06 pm

I got caught in thunderstorms when on the Minigaig shortly after I'd climbed out of glen Bruar onto the high pass. I went to a local area of low ground, put up the tent and waited it out. After 45 minutes it was over.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Sgurr » Mon Jun 06, 2022 8:24 pm

We were up Carn na Breabaig when we had a similar experience. I was going to count the seconds between the flash and the bang to see how far away it was, but the flash and bang were simultaneous. I could feel a fizzing through my poles coming up into my hands despite gloves. A fox belted away ahead as if he was thinking," if they can summon this up, what would happen to me if they caught me?!" We were on the ridge, so galloped down below it and sat for a while until it briefly seemed to get further away when we got as far down as we could before it came back. The rain was torrential. This shows the waterfall before and after. I THINK YOU DID THE RIGHT THING. We were lucky to live to tell the tale.

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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby TheWildHaggis » Tue Jun 07, 2022 8:17 am

I am happy to hear others would have taken the same course of action as myself.


walkingpoles wrote:I don't know whether you had options to sit it out somewhere instead of to keep walking.
When the storm struck I was on a very bare and open bit of land (as most of that area is), I did consider trying to wait out the storm lower down, but my mind was telling me just to keep going. The track i was using to descend goes through some very boggy ground until the Dubh Loch, and then down to Loch Muick, It was in my mind that water makes an excellent conductor and any potential strikes on the bog/lochs/rivers could spread via the saturated ground.

ohsosky wrote:Lightning looks for the closest path to the ground if I remember right so you are supposed to sit on your bum with your legs pulled in, preferably on your bag.
I have read this as well but I do wonder what the theory is of using your bag to isolate from the ground, would a few mm of fabric make much difference, after all that bolt of lightning has just bridged an air gap of many thousands of feet, could possibly help isolate from a nearby ground strike

walkingpoles wrote:, poles are as dangerous (if not more) in a backpack as they are in ones hand (happy to stand corrected).
Now i did have the poles strapped horizontally across the back of the rucksack, I figured having them vertically would be akin to having a mini lightning conductor on my back but thinking about so was the way I was carrying them, next time I might just abandon them.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby WalkWithWallace » Tue Jun 07, 2022 9:35 am

Scary experience! I'd have done the same thing to be honest.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Giant Stoneater » Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:41 am

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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Sgurr » Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:52 am

To look on the bright side, only 2 people are killed by lightning in the UK each year, and 30 are injured. They don't say if the injury prevents people going out and walking again.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Border Reiver » Tue Jun 07, 2022 1:12 pm

al78 wrote:I got caught in thunderstorms when on the Minigaig shortly after I'd climbed out of glen Bruar onto the high pass. I went to a local area of low ground, put up the tent and waited it out. After 45 minutes it was over.

Me and my brother in law also got caught out in the open while crossing the Minigaig. It was a hot day and it became very oppressive as we ascended from the South, then the thunder and lightning just started and we ducked down into a stream bed to sit it out. It was scary as the thunder crashed all around us, but it never rained. The only other time was as I descended off the Cairngorms one April day and I heard a prolonged whining and buzzing sound, I knew from reading books that it was my ice axe humming from electricity in the air, so I took it off my rucksack and trailed it on the ground by its leash. The thunder never came and again it didn't rain.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby weedavie » Tue Jun 07, 2022 3:45 pm

I remember going up the Stuic about ten years ago, when lightning started striking. About four hundred metres on to the plateau, a bolt of lightning seemed to go overhead then bend down the face of the Stuic. It was unnerving.

We got on to Lochnagar, the odd rumble still resounding. There was a lassie standing on the trig point, a walking pole pointed to the sky! Some things you see and just don't understand.
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Girl Outdoors » Tue Jun 07, 2022 4:19 pm

I finding these accounts of people being caught out and suddenly experiencing thunder and lightening quite interesting and very sobering. I'm wondering in retrospect if you would have done anything different? Were there any indications that the weather was changing that you ignored?
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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby Sgurr » Tue Jun 07, 2022 5:16 pm

In my case, yes. We sat on the top of the hill watching the black clouds mount up, thinking they were a long, long way away maybe because to us it would have been... go down to Iron Lodge cycle all the way up the glen, get into a car and drive round to the entry to Glen Affric, and drive slowly up the glen. Of course we didn't CONSCIOUSLY think of anything so stupid, but subconsciouly we might have. We even ate our lunch.

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Re: Thunder and Lightning very very frightning

Postby al78 » Tue Jun 07, 2022 7:00 pm

Girl Outdoors wrote:I finding these accounts of people being caught out and suddenly experiencing thunder and lightening quite interesting and very sobering. I'm wondering in retrospect if you would have done anything different? Were there any indications that the weather was changing that you ignored?


In my case yes. When I was heading up glen Bruar and stopped at the head of the glen to refill water bottles, I could see deep convection building over what looked like the upland area to the north. In hindsight I should have waited it out in the glen before climbing onto the pass.

My most nervewracking experience with thunderstorms was on a guided backpacking trip in the Pyrenees. We got hammered by a thunderstorm with lightning right as we were crossing a high col, and we were in the cloud. Fortunately nothing bad came of it but I was very anxious at the time.

Later in the week we ended up re-routing because of reports of severe thunderstorms with golf ball size hail.
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