Is lightning only attracted to tall people?
In: Earth Science
no, it’s not.
When large amounts of clouds rub against each other, they charge each other, like a person charging themselves by rubbing their feet on a carpet. The discharge happens as soon as the resistance against the moving electricity is smaller than charges power to move. That’s when a lightning strikes.
Air is very resistant to electricity moving through it, so it would rather choose something easier like a tree, or something very easy like a water-filled human. So if a large person would be standing next to a smaller person, lightning would be likely to rather jump this person as it offers less resistance. There could also be a much lower hanging part of the cloud right over the small person, so there is less air “shielding” this one. Then lightning would strike this person instead of the tall one.
It’s attracted to whatever the tallest thing around is. If two people of different heights were standing near each other in an empty field, the lightning would probably go to the taller person. However, if a short person was alone in an empty field, the lightning would still probably hit them
The rules that govern the behavior of electricity dictate that this must be true.
Making the initial connection that precipitates a strike is more likely to happen to an object that sticks up above the surrounding landscape.
The more this is true, the likelier this event is. The taller the object the better the odds.
Extend that objects height into the clouds and the odds change from likely to near inevitable.
But here is the rub.
The difference between the height of a tall person and a short person compared to the height of the cloud base is tiny. So tiny that the difference in the odds is so small that it is drowned out by other factors, like the soil conductivity under your feet or the chance cosmic ray that ionizes a path in the air above you.
So being tall is in no way significant to your odds of being struck by lightning.
Just out of curiosity how old are you?
All the 6’2 people in the forests right now: 😳
Lightning wants to get to the ground, and it wants to get there with the lowest amount of resistance possible. Air has a lot of resistance, so lightning will be attracted to the closest thing to the sky that’s 1) not air and 2) connected to the ground.
If Person A is 5’8″ and Person B is 6’1″ and lightning hits right on top of them, then it really won’t make any difference at all who gets hit. Maybe both of them; who knows.
If Person A and Person B are standing next to a 50 foot tall tree, then the tree will be hit instead of them. The tree will then probably explode, so Person A and Person B are gonna have a shitty day no matter what…but, hey, at least they didn’t get hit by lightning?
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