Actually, the safest place to be is inside an enclosed building. The main reason is because the wiring and the plumbing in the building help conduct the electricity from lightning down into the ground.

 

So if lightning strikes your house, you won’t get shocked?

 

You wanna stay away from sinks, showers, electrical devices, because if lightning strikes your house, there’s a potential that it would carry through the wiring or the plumbing of the house and actually come out through one of those devices.

 

It seems like it's a common myth perhaps that the safest place to be in a lightning storm is a car. Is that not true?

 

Actually, the second safest place to be is in a car. If you’re caught outside, you can’t get to an enclosed building, getting into a vehicle, an enclosed metal vehicle is a safe place to be. Similar to the wiring or plumbing in a house, the current can travel through the metal outer shell of the vehicle and travel into the ground.

 

So it has nothing to do with the tires, the rubber tires being looked to like, I guess, serve as a barrier or something for the lightening, that’s not true?

 

No, rubber tires do nothing to prevent lightening. In fact in some instances, tires have exploded due to lightening strikes on vehicles.

 

Here in a car that is struck by lightning, what’s the rule, you don’t touch anything for 30 minutes, or so you said?

 

You find yourself in a vehicle and lightning or thunder storms are in the area, you wanna make sure that you keep the door shut, roll up the windows and don’t touch any metal in the vehicle. You probably wanna wait about 30 minutes after the thunder is ended before you get out of the vehicle. You are never truly safe from lightning if you’re outdoors. So if you hear thunder or see lightning or see dark clouds approaching in the sky, you wanna make sure that you immediately head indoors.

 

Lightning is attracted to the tallest objects, typically on the ground, and that’s typically where you’re gonna see struck to tall trees or tall buildings you know. The Empire State building has been struck many times.

 

Tall people?

 

Tall people, yeah …