Well, my friends, thunderstorm season is upon us. There’s no questioning that. So, here are a few things to chew on the next time you’re trembling under the bed.
- Fear of thunderstorms is “astraphobia”
- Scientists estimate that lightning occurs, somewhere on earth, 100 times per second. That adds up to about 30,000 strikes in the time it will take you to read this story.
- The Great Red Spot in Jupiter is thought to be a huge storm, three times the size of Earth, which has been raging for possibly as long as 400 years.
- When there is a storm in the desert, lightening can strike the sand with such intensity and heat as to instantly create a bolt-shaped glass tube known as a “fulgurites”.
- Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer, enjoyed collecting strange thunderstorm stories such as these:
* When an Irish home was struck, all the shells in
a bowl of eggs were shattered but the internal
membranes were left intact.
* When another building was struck, every second
plate in a stack of twelve was shattered.
* An English workman in 1878 got too close to
lightening and the fabric of his clothes expanded
so violently that he was stripped naked on the
spot. (And burned as well.)
- Fear of thunderstorms is “astraphobia”
- Scientists estimate that lightning occurs, somewhere on earth, 100 times per second. That adds up to about 30,000 strikes in the time it will take you to read this story.
- The Great Red Spot in Jupiter is thought to be a huge storm, three times the size of Earth, which has been raging for possibly as long as 400 years.
- When there is a storm in the desert, lightening can strike the sand with such intensity and heat as to instantly create a bolt-shaped glass tube known as a “fulgurites”.
- Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer, enjoyed collecting strange thunderstorm stories such as these:
* When an Irish home was struck, all the shells in
a bowl of eggs were shattered but the internal
membranes were left intact.
* When another building was struck, every second
plate in a stack of twelve was shattered.
* An English workman in 1878 got too close to
lightening and the fabric of his clothes expanded
so violently that he was stripped naked on the
spot. (And burned as well.)
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