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Riding the Storm Out

Living outdoors with lightning, wind and hail

By Craig Springer

Found in: | Outside |

I'm sitting on the bench on my front porch watching summer unfold. It's hot and sunny here. To the northeast, it's dark and dreary - a drastic difference in weather common to the Four Corners - and certainly commonplace during the monsoon season. It can be raining in your back yard while it's dry and parched in your front.
I hear the drone of the 6 o'clock news whirr through the window screen. Between commercials that boast about how many awards the station has won the weather guy gets excited about the moving amorphous mass of green and yellow and red on the radar screen.
It is serious stuff. With these kind of storms, it brings with them hail, flooding, and lightning. And they kill people.
But the Doppler and models had nothing on me. There, in front of me, a huge cottony thunderhead billowed into the stratosphere over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was light on top and flat, smoothed over with a trailing edge like it had been laid low with a mason's trowel.
It was ominously dark on the bottom. With frequency it lit up like stoked embers red in a camp fire, burning down for the night. It was impressive to watch, like a water color moving in spontaneity, there en plein-air, lighting up every sensory nerve. But it was silent here. Yet my ears could here the splat and crack of loud thunder that split the air and ears of anglers and hikers who heard it overhead in the Santa Fe National Forest. What could be expressed in placid pastels on paper, violently let go dark massive energy.
Jim Pringle, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, Colo., said there is more to be concerned with than lightning during summer storms. "Flash floods in the steep narrow canyons should be top of mind for hikers," said Pringle, a 32-year veteran forecaster. The varied terrain that the Grand Junction office serves, 52,000 square miles in Colorado and Utah, runs from 4,000 to 14,000 elevation. These varied terrains create their own micro-climates and confound forecasting.
Chuck Jones, also a meteorologist with the National Weather Service stationed in the forecasting office in Albuquerque, says when you're out of doors in the summer, stay aware.
"Virtually anything associated with thunder storms is potentially hazardous," said Jones. "But lightning is probably the first concern."
According to Jones, lightning can strike the ground several miles away from a developing storm, up to 10 miles away at the most, but routinely seven or eight miles from visible storm clouds.
Outdoorsmen and women need to know the 30-30 rule, says Jones. If you count less than 30 seconds between seeing a lightning bolt and hearing the thunderous sound, you are close enough to be struck by lightning. In the passing throes of a storm, mark the time at which you hear the last thunder. After 30 minutes have passed since the last rumble, you are probably safe from lightning from that passing storm.
In any case, you should seek shelter from the storm.
"The best you could outdoors is to stay in a car, because it is grounded," said Jones. "But don't touch anything that is metal; a lightning strike will pass through the car and into the ground."
But what if you're backpacking through a national forest, fishing for smallmouth bass on Navajo Lake, or angling for trout, wading the Rio de Las Vacas in the Jemez Mountains?
Jones was adamant: If caught outside, don't get under a tree. Go to a lowest-lying area and assume a low profile. Don't get into a flooded or soggy area since water transmits electricity quite well. Ideally, Jones says to get on your tippy-toes to give as little contact as possible on the ground. Crouch with your head on your knees to assume a low profile.
If you are on a lake, get off. Like standing under a tall tree is like standing on a lightning rod, so it is with boats. They are the highest point on the water, and most vulnerable to direct strikes. Even a nearby strike on a lake is deadly. "Water and lightning are not a good mix," says Jones. "Water conducts electricity very well, and it gets super hot."
Trees can't be avoided in the forest. The best precaution to take in the woods is to find a stand of even-aged trees in a low area ? that is, a large grove of trees that are all near the same size. Stay away from the tallest trees, and isolated trees.
Jones says if you feel tingling skin and your hair stands on end, you are about to get struck. Assume the low profile he describes as quickly possible. Those that live through lightning strikes are usually hit with indirect side-splash lightning. But it burns, messes up your heart rhythm traveling at 50,000 mph and strikes at 100,000 watts of energy.
If that wasn't bad enough, there are other dangers that aren't always top of mind, says Jones, like tornadoes, hail and straight-line winds.
Tornadoes are not so common in the Four Corners, Tornado Alley starts in eastern New Mexico, but Jones and Pringle both proffered to be aware the potential exists. If you're indoors, go to the center of a building, like an inside closet or bathroom, away from windows. Outdoors, stay in a car if you can, or in low swales to avoid tree branches-turned-missiles.
Hail not only can dimple your car and have you calling your insurance agent; it could send you to the hospital or to the morgue. The biggest hail comes during summer storms, says Jones. Pea-sized is common, but imagine being showered with softball-sized pieces of ice traveling on the pull of gravity. It can happen. It can hurt.
Straight-line winds happen, too, when there is hail. And can turn a twig into an injurious projectile. These winds come on the front edge of a storm, the cooling air that precedes the dumping of water or hail. Down drafts of air surge to the ground, warming and expanding, plus moving at the forward speed of the advancing storm, while updrafts push water droplets higher, creating the hail until the pull of gravity exceeds the lift.
Technology can keep you in-the-know with what the sky is about to determine. You can get email and text alerts to changing weather but for that you have to be plugged in. Pringle suggests a good, old-fashioned radio. NOAA Weather Radio is top-notch and is available in small hand-held radios you can carry outdoors. Knowing what's coming can help you determine your routes in the woods.
Thunderhead clouds are an enigma. They supply the universal need for rain yet wreak havoc on the helpless. The wet summer weather enlivens the range, restocks springs and seeps, and freshets cue minnows and trout to spawn.
Here in front of me on my front porch, in a moving pastel of fleeting sunlight, a slight chill comes on as the sun sinks. Long rays paint the anvil-head every hue imaginable. It's something to behold, like a Bert Phillips painting from Taos hanging on a gallery wall perfectly lit for the eye, but probably discomforting to anyone on the mountain underneath the showers bending in the wind, pelting the skin.

Craig Springer shelters in Santa Fe County, N. M.