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Oh hey, it's your mom's neighbor who dresses up that ceramic goose on our porch? Now in a tiny scarecrow costume for fall Ali Ward. I'm back with another episode five every one of Ologies. This is one of those very very many years in the making episodes where as soon as I decided to make this podcast Ology, so I was like, I got a hit up this expert and I put them on a list. This interview it's electric. But first let's thank everyone in the club at patreon
dot com slash ologies. You're like fam. You submit questions and you find out what episodes are coming up. I love you. Thanks to everyone who's recommended ologies on like message boards and group texts and socially distanced barbecues. Thanks to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you to the folks who press subscribe and who rate it. We're like number three on the science charts. It's bananas.
Especially thank you to the folks who leave reviews for me to read on days when I feel like a dirty, nervous prairie dog, which is often sometimes, I read them all and so here's a fresh one to prove it. This is from love this who said you think scientists would be very serious people who get straight to the point, but nope, So fun to listen to I learned so much. Thanks dad, word. I hope you know that that's your name now and that will be put on your headstone.
I hope you like it. Signed, love this, Love this, I love that. Yes, I'm into it. It's an honor. Okay. So, folmonology, let's get into it. Very much a thing. It's the science of those streaks in the sky, and it comes from the Latin word fulgare, which means to shine or to flash. And by the way, I'd learned this one minute ago that fulminate also means to publish a thundering denunciation. So if you're feeling pretty charged up by current events,
fulminate to your heart's content by sweet smart babies kaboom. Okay. So, also, if you have a fear of thunder and lightning, you're not alone. I'm looking straight at you, my dog Remy, and also my dear sister friend Shannon feltis you have something that is called kronophobia. It's also inexplicably named astrophobia, brontophobia, and tonatrophobia. So let's learn a little bit more about it. Okay.
So I met this ologist probably five years ago. We were both on the bill for a nerd night in LA and he just dazzled this whiskey drunk crowd with
wildfire and thunderstorm facts. And he studied fire science in northern California and for the past decade has been a researcher with the Westcats Group, reviewing satellite imagery and monitoring weather patterns and really mapping the topography of the Western United States to figure out how geology and mountains interact with weather systems to better predict where lightning might strike.
So he is such a Californian. I love it. He's laid back, he's cool, affable, committed to protecting the land we love out here. So kick your boots up, lean back on your porch chair, and open a beer or an organic superfoods kombucha, and enjoy some facts about thunder and lightning and thor and storms and pigeons and volcanoes and scars and chigawatts and sprites and elves and flaming tornadoes and of course wildfires with lightning scientists and your
favorite folmonologist Chris Gizigi. When all of this news of all of these like dry lightning and dry storms and blazing hollow trees was coming out the last couple of weeks, I was like, I have so many questions.
Oh.
My first question, though, I always have to ask, is can you say your first and last name and what your pronouns are?
My name is Chris Gisigi. Pronouns he okay.
Also, Chris is about to start a new and very exciting job, but because we're so deep in infernos out here, his start time has to wait until after fire season.
Ironically, that's a a job as an inspector with CalFire, so going to properties and places and making sure that people are ready to go in case of wildfire. Not if, but when a wildfire comes through up in the Napa County area.
When is fire season even over in California?
You know, it all depends this year.
I mean it's it's looking like it's going to be high and dry until at least October November. I'm ready to go. I mean, shot man, I got my boots, I got my gear. Throw me on there, my n ninety five masks. Put me out there and let me talk to some people about some fire prevention.
Yeah, I mean you're from up there. Did you grow up with fires and lightning really on your radar on your Doppler since you were a kid or where did you start getting into this.
Well, it's you know, it's funny because California in general, a lot of people think, oh, yeah, California's kind of boring.
Yeah, maybe they got some earthquakes here and there too.
So growing up in Sonoma County, I really don't remember a lot of fire activity. We don't really get too much thunder and lightning.
It was one of those things where we're just like, oh, you know, at the time, being a firefighter would be cool. Maybe I'll be able to do that, you know, kind of macho and you know, let's get out there. Yeah, bro, firefighting.
It really wasn't until maybe later years of high school or I started thinking, ah, you know, that'd be kind of cool.
It pay as well. At the time, benefits are really good. You know, it's all about the future.
Find something that you can you can get all those good perks with. And then you go to college and I'm like, wow, actually the science of this stuff is a lot more fascinating to me.
Ah. And what kind of courses did you start taking? Was it meteorology or physics or what is it? Fire? Lightning? Scientists study.
So at first it's just straight fire science.
So you're looking at fire chemistry, you're looking at fire behavior, you're looking at fire prevention systems. And it's both kind of wildland and structure fire or residential fire, so you can you kind of pick up both. At least the program I was in, it was even things like hazard's materials and weapons of mass destruction and all that kind of crazy stuff. So basically it's fire chemistry, a history of fires, fire behavior, fire prevention systems, things like hazardous materials.
He says that once you get further into college and you jump through those flaming hoops, you can specialize in how meteorology affects fire and climate, or you can study GIS, which I one hundred percent had to look up and
found that it means geographic information systems aka maps. Well, it's technically a framework for gathering, managing, and analyzing data rooted in the science of geography and analyzing spatial location and layers of information into visualizations using map in three D scenes, which means just really bitching as hell maps.
You could even just continue into some sort of fire management, and so a lot of my coursework is strictly related to fire, and then a lot of life science is stuff, so weather in climate physics definitely, and calculus.
M h. A lot of people don't know, but yes you do calculus.
What are you calculusing as a fire scientist?
Yeah, so many computers and different models that kind of help us with this. So there really isn't that much calculus when you're doing just in the field stuff. But in terms of meteorology and fire weather, calculus is a lot of its integrals and derivatives. It's all rates of change.
And so how much of your work deals with fire science and how much deals with lightning or is it kind of an equal amount.
It's kind of an equal amount.
My re search in particular is more lightning and we look more at the electrical magnetic properties of it. Let's say we're trying to figure out a way to build more confidence in our.
Lightning models for prediction or projections.
So we kind of look at all, right, what are the different atmospheric elements and conditions that are happening, and how is that interacting with the Earth creating some sort of electrical magnetic environment in that particular place to create lightning at a certain place at a certain.
Time, and then we relate that mostly to.
A typical quote unquote when would be fire season, which is usually your late spring or summer months through fall. We come up with some sort of projection system to say, all right, these areas have high risk of lightning, and because during these months, when these certain conditions are met, lightning cause fires could be issues here.
Oh okay, this is a huge issue. And as someone who lives on the West Coast, the last few weeks our lives out eat have just been spent indoors, not only because of Corona, but because the air is so thick with smoke you can barely see a few hundred feet in front of you. I myself have had horrible headaches, a few migraines, throat hurts, the whites of my eyes are kind of a soft fuchia color. And wildfires in Oregon have claimed the lives of dozens of people and counting.
So this is a really big topic. But we're gonna put a pin in it for a second and get to the basics of lightning. What does it look like, how does it work? And is the sky mad? Bro and do you have a lightning storm in your mind that when you think back, is like the most fireworks one that you've ever experienced. What's the craziest lightning storm you've ever seen?
Uh?
It man, there's a lot of good ones. Yeah, I mean not really here in California, per Sae. The last one we had recently was you know, it was damaging and everything, but from my perspective, it was kind of fun. But most of the major lightning storms that have been through either Florida or Ohio, the Midwest or the Florida which gets lightning like crazy. It was actually at Disney World. It looked like the cloud to ground lightning strikes were
hitting the bush right in front of us. Oh yeah, everything rumbles in the cracks and you kind of loose stability for a little bit, and you're so loud and it's so bright, to the point where like my mom and my sister were actually covering their ears and be like, we don't want.
To be here, we need to leave. How old were you?
Uh this is three years ago?
Okay, like a baby?
No, no, And of me, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. We got to see We're got to see what happens. Let's say if it's going to hit that tower. Let's see if it's gonna fry these people or.
Were they like, Chris, did you bring this with you? It knows that you're a fire lightning wizard.
The fire lighting.
It's going on your business card. Okay, so this but seeing it that up close, I've never seen it that up close. But okay, what is the difference between lightning striking the clouds to the ground versus the ground to the clouds, Like, what exactly is lightning? Where is it going?
Oh? So the story of lightning?
Oh yes, okay, so this is I've actually kind of written about this, so I have. Yeah, Well, to kind of set a tone here, The way I think of the process of lightning happening is I think about all these little molecules and particles that are happening within the cloud and happening within the atmosphere and are you know, flowing in the earth.
And I always like to think of them as an.
Emoji or as little emojis running around with different smiley faces or positive charge and negative charge m and you know, and they have this goal in life, and that's to find find something of the opposite charge and connect with it and do this little dance and then they go into the great beyond afterwards wherever.
That is, whatever they're doing, whatever they're doing there. So lightning is it's a development of a certain cloud type called cumulatimus clouds.
So if you heard Nuphology with doctor Rachel Store, you may be familiar already with cloud anatomy.
And what happens is within these clouds. The clouds formed
because we typically have updrafts of air. Warm air rises, so we get updrafts, and as it rises, it runs into the altitude, so you get higher up and higher up it gets a little colder, and so as that air rises, it kind of cools and condenses and a little droplets form around particulates, little ice crystals can form, and they're banging around in there, having a good old time, hitting each other, bumping, doing whatever, and and at that point you kind of you start to build up like
this static charge. It's electrostatic charge. It's in the clouds as electrons start to get stripped or transferred for one to the other. And so during this process, eventually what happens is these clouds when they're starting to get ready, when they're priming themselves for a lightning event, they separate themselves. So the negative charges go down towards the bottom of the cloud and the positive charges go towards the middle of the top of the cloud. And this is because
what weather is, it's a neutralization process. So we're trying to get these electrons that are up in the cloud down to Earth and want to neutralize themselves at Earth, bring them back to where they belong, so they separate themselves up there, and then at the same time they're separating themselves in other clouds, or they're separating themselves at the ground.
So on the ground level you might have.
The electrons will actually get pushed down further to further lowers of the ground, which leaves nothing but a positive charge stuck at the surface. This is just opposites attract like charges repel each other. So the electrons in the cloud are going to help push those down, those electrons in the ground down even further into the ground, and
that leaves a nice positive charge on the surface. So what happens then is once everything gets kind of built up, then those charges are going to look to connect somewhere, and so sometimes they're gonna interconnect within the cloud. Sometimes they're going to connect between one cloud and another, which is cloud to cloud, or sometimes they're going to try and connect with the charges that are on the ground, and that would be cloud to ground lighting.
Oh okay, So these ice particles are just having an airborne mashpit. Some are losing electrons, some are gaining them, and this tension builds and then the moshpit divides with the negative charges heading to the bottom. Now, as for cloud to ground lightning, electrons on the Earth's surface get pushed further into the ground. So positive charges are kind of simmering on the ground and they have to meet each other and then boom, lightning strikes to neutralize it,
and the mash pit goes wild. They love it. And then they're like, and so, which is most common?
Uh?
Cloud to ground lightning is actually the least common.
It's the one we see and the one we relate to the most, but it only makes up like twenty to twenty five percent of lightning strikes.
The rest are typically cloud to cloud or intracloud.
Oh okay, yeah, crazy right, yeah yeah yeah. And so they're up there kind of banging around and discharging that electricity from cloud to cloud a lot of the times. But we notice the ones that are ground cloud because they're kind of closer to us.
Well, they look cooler, they're more streaky. They're the ones that we see when the flash comes down, and yeah, it's like an adrenaline rush for them.
Really. Yeah.
What I picture is, you know, the ones coming from the cloud to the ground. What I picture is is, after enough electrostatic charges is built up in the clouds, they're not ready to go.
And you have something called step leaders and.
Streamers, and these are kind of the leading molecule, the leading chargers that are getting out there and ready to go.
So these are step leaders that reach down toward the ground and streamers down below that reach up.
And so I picture these these little charges strapping on a helmet, putting on their goggles, and the step leaders are up in the cloud and they're shouting out at the streamers down in the ground.
You know, uh, step leader to streamer leader, step leader to streamer leader, over streamer, two step leader, streamer, two step leader, coffee docage.
All right, there we go.
And they turn around and they get all the other electrons riled up. Yeah, let's go.
So then they throw on some heavy metal music and start they're just.
Gonna say you needams for this.
Yeah.
Yeah, So they you know, and they take off and the step leaders kind of the initiator of these lightning strikes, and so they take off towards the ground, and they have no idea where they're going. They have no idea where these other charges are on the ground because there's such a distance between them. They can only really communicate about fifty meters or so.
So that's why you start to see lightning in jagged forms.
Because it's these electrons trying to reach the ground that are trying to find the opposite charge but really can't. So they shoot out in intervals and they take this jagged path until eventually they connect with it and then they meet together and the streamers, so the charges on the ground will actually reach up sometime and try and meet them at a certain point.
Cool.
Yeah, And is it fractals at all? Or am I making that up? Does it go like two veins split into four veines split into Is there anything like mathematic or pattern wise about lightning strikes or is it pretty random?
It's just kind of whatever path they can find for least resistance. And however they can try and find themselves.
To the opposite charge.
Mm hmm.
But I mean it does form a very treelike kind of like family treelike structure, or veins of a river or stream. Yeah, something like that, which is pretty cool.
You've never been struck by lightning?
Have you?
I have not. Okay, I do not plan on it. I don't know. I don't know about you, Ali, but that a little lightning, uh pat, lighting up the butt doesn't sound too good. And I don't know about you.
Gonna gonna keep my butt right out of it, to be honest. Have you heard about the guy who was struck something like seven times?
Uh?
Yeah, that'd be the old park ranger guy. Uh shoot, what's his name's Roy Sullivan?
Oh?
Nice?
Yeah? Have you ever looked him up?
I have, and I've read his story, and I mean, what do you think was happening with him?
Oh? My god?
I mean, this poor guy, so several of the instances, I mean, he gets struck, he's driving away from a storm and gets nailed by lighting inside of his car. I think something like that happened twice.
Yep, it's true. And apparently whenever he was caught in a storm, he would pull over and lie down in the front seat of the truck to hide from the lightning. And he also started to carry around a can of water in case he got struck again and his hair caught on fire, and spoiler, he had to use that can more than once.
He's out working in the field, gets struck a third time. He even one time was inside of his house, just sitting there in his chair.
And from the way they.
Explained it, I mean, this guy is just unlucky as shit. The way they explained it, the lightning bolt finds its way through the electrical system into his house, ricochets off of this sort of like a metal container or something, and then zap him in his chair.
Wow, I mean, how unlucky does that for that to happen.
Do you think it's possible that he was a very negatively charged person, You.
Know, nothing surprises me. Yeah, it could be. It could be circumstances, wrong place, wrong time. It could be I don't know.
Maybe he upset Zeus in some way, and Zeus is just like scream Man.
Maybe he needed an exorcism. Ps. Poor Roy Sullivan started to think that maybe there was a force out to get him, and he started to fear death, which would have happened to me after the first strike, Let's be honest, but like around strike four, he was like, oh shit, am I gonna die? But Roy didn't die from a lightning strike, sadly, he passed away from a self inflicted gunshot wound. Proof that even a powerful shock from the sky that could kill a herd of lives can be
less painful and deadly than mental health struggles. Just in case you needed another reason to be compassionate to follow humans today. But let's get back to bullminology. Talk to me a little bit about the different forms, because from what I understand, there's heat and ball and sprites and dry lightning. I don't know what any of those are. I just know the words.
Oh yeah, so sprites. Well, first of all, there's several things, so sprites and elves, and.
There's other type of mythical creature names that come to it, trolls. What these are, so sprites and all controls. What these are is electromagnetic discharges. So you have a lightning event and you're having a discharge of electricity and you just create electromagnetic pulses. And so what a sprite or an ell might be is lightning itself actually discharges these electromagnetic discharges up above it, so into the next layer of
the atmosphere. So they happen above lightning events, and typically it's from positive lightning, so positive lighting. You have positive lightning and negative lightning, and it's the type of attraction that there is, so negative lightning is a lot more common. It's when the negative charges connect with the positive charges on the ground. And then positive lightning is a lot less common, but it's a lot more powerful. And that's when there's positive charges in the cloud connect with the.
Negative charges on the ground. Okay, And this just has to do with one.
Is the positive lightning usually proton based and so a lot more dense than electrons, so they can pull up more electrons and by doing that you create more energy.
Okay.
Yeah, And so it's typically after these really intense, high energy positive lightning strikes that you will get things like sprites or elves and kind you know sprites.
Have you ever seen pictures?
No? No, no, I'll look it up though.
Sprites they look like jellyfish in the sky or yeah, or if you're I don't know, if anyone out there likes as a Pokemon person, but they kind of look like tenta cruls up there giant pokemon to me at least that's what I see.
So, yes, they're called sprites and elves and gnomes and pixies, and their upper atmosphere lightning or what's called transient luminous events, so they look like discs or red spots at the top of clouds or blue jets are kind of like jellyfish ghosts and UFOs and rave lights. Also, who doesn't love a well done backronym like transient red optical luminous
lineament aka trolls. Only trolls don't like that. Also, a lot of folks asked about ball lightning, which has been described by one expert as a luminous sphere most often the size of a small child's head. Sure, that's a unit of measurement. The United States won't adopt the metric system, but we will use standards like the size of a small child head. But scientists still don't really understand what
the deal is with ball lightning. Now, for a long time, up until the nineteen nineties, these were just dismissed as like hallucinations. So wow, we got a lot to learn future fulmonologists please figure it out. Thank you. Now, what about like dry lightning or heat lightning, the kind of lightning that we've had in California lately that has been sparking fires.
Yeah, dry lightning is it's basically just lightning with very very minimal to no precipitation. So what happens is a storm comes through, like for instance, the one that we recently had, we're getting a bunch of moisture dished off from that tropical storm that was down there in the south east Pacific, shooting moisture like a laser gun into California.
Boom poom. And at the same time, it's actually really hot.
So what happens is you get your typical thunderstorm build up, but the precipitation of vaporates before it gets to the ground, and that's when you see clouds that are called virga, and virga is just just a formation, so it looks like stuff's coming out of the cloud, but then it evaporates and you still get lightning at the same time because there's such a build up of charge going on.
Up there in the atmosphere.
And the reason that's particularly dangerous, as we saw in California or other states in the Western US might see. Is that with that little precipitation, that means there's not a lot of water to come along with these lightning strikes, and if vegetation or fuels are extremely dry, then you get the potential for lightning costs fires, big events like the one we just had where we had eleven thousand lightning strikes and that caused hundreds of fires at the same time, you know, within two days.
Yeah, that's your potential.
There oof eleven thousand lightning strikes. I look this up. That's real. That's a real number. Any How, hot is a lightning strike. I've read that it's potentially hotter than the sun.
Hotter than the surface of the sun. So yeah, so it can reach home to like fifty to sixty thousand degrees fahrenheit. Oh yeah, it's freaking crazy.
Yeah, I know, that's nuts.
And so you've got that striking a dry hillside and it's just like a like tinder box.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So those are one of the things I would look for in fire weather under certain types of red flag conditions is the possibility of dry lightning.
Okay, we're going to get back to fires.
In a bit.
But first, there are about eight million lightning strikes a day on Earth. But where are they happening? And you mentioned the Western United States and before you had mentioned shout out Florida, Ohio, great lightning. Why do some areas of the globe have more lightning and other stones or different types.
A lot of it has to do with just the amount of moisture that they're getting. So in these tropical zones, what we see is there's a lot more moisture being pumped in by those warm ocean currents. The more motion and moisture is a pretty good precursor to lightning because it's what help forms those droplets. So in those areas,
in those zones, they're usually a lot warmer. So now you have the heat that is rising convection, so warm air is rising and it combines with that moisture to help produce the sort of charge it's up there in the atmosphere, and that's why they typically get a lot more lightning. And it's just this constant flow and this constant pump of this warm air and this moisture, and solar radiance too a big factor in it.
What is solar radiance?
These are just the little particles that we get from the Sun. It's the energy that we receive from the Sun.
So the Sun shoots out these photons and big beams of photons that get transported all the way through space onto Earth.
With that, you have current.
So the flow those particles is current, which creates heat, and that right there is a source of energy.
So my solar is so big.
It's the big differences in how the Earth is heated by the Sun and how it collects solar radiance that helps develop certain pressure and wind conditions.
Oh okay, and so you have that whole big bag of mixed factors and with the right conditions, with the right conveection and moisture and ions like that is why some areas are just more lightning prone.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's the climate of that of those particular areas or mountain ranges or another big one topography. So how that topography is laid out is pretty big too.
What about if you're in the middle of a lightning storm and you're in your car, are you safe because of the rubber tires or does it act like a Faraday cage? How does a Faraday cage even work?
If so so typically, yeah, you typically are pretty safe in your car, but that doesn't mean that there's not a possibility.
Of getting hit. As our old friend Roy Sullivan, he understands and knows Roy, But typically you are a little bit safer because.
Of that, But it doesn't mean that you know it's not going to find a way of resistance to find its way through your car and hit you.
Just an audio note, something was buzzing in the background and it sounds like lightning, but Chris and I have no idea what it was, to be honest, so just consider it part of the lightning vibe.
Folks.
It's not followed by thunder each time, though, so don't worry. What about counting lightning and thunder? We've seen it in a million movies. You count, You can do a calculation. You can know how far away the storm is, if it's coming or going. Is that flim flam or is that real deal?
Now, typically you actually kind of can.
So the general rule is that you see a lightning strike and you count, and every five seconds is about a mile.
Okay.
I used to yeah, I used to.
I used to hear a lot that you know, you count in the number of seconds. You count the number of miles away that there the storm is where the lightning strikes are, but it's about.
Five seconds per mile, okay. Yeah, And so.
If you're outside or whatever, you want to know if it's safe to go outside, then you generally try and get to a point where you see lightning but don't hear any thunder.
Oh good to know. So it's far enough away where it's not going to come and get you.
Yeah, it's tough because a lot of people think, okay, well, you know it's five miles away, but lightning travels very, very far, and you know it can strike you from quite some distance.
How long do you think is a typical lightning bolt?
Most of them actually aren't that long.
But I mean you can be several miles out and that thing will find an area. If that area is charged and ready to go.
For it, does it usually want to discharge or connect with a charge that's higher up? Like is that why there's lightning rods? Or do trees get zapped a lot? And how does that kill cows under trees? Which I don't know if that's a myth too.
It can definitely kill animals.
So the reason we have lightning rods or the reason that a very tall tree might be one of the worst spots to stand under or isolated tall trees is they're providing a path of lease resistance. So when these storms come, these charges from the ground are able to kind of flow up into those places and connect with the lightning that's coming out of the atmosphere. Because they happen to be tall, the charges are able.
To meet a little bit earlier there.
And if you happen to be the cow standing underneath it, and uh, those charges on the ground start flowing through areas, or lightning decides that it doesn't want to hit that tree, you're gonna get a little spark that's going to go off one leg, through the heart and down the other side.
Wow.
Yeah, they even had the crazy couple hundred reindeer actually think it was Canada done from a lightning strike.
A ton of them dead because it had just.
Done that travel travels up one side, goes right through the heart, troubles down the other.
Oh my gosh, I wonder if that's a painful death or if it's really quick.
I hope it's quick.
I would say you could ask the reindeer, but that's not.
Not available for comment. Ps. This lightning strike that can over three hundred reindeer was in Norway in twenty sixteen and experts say that the lightning struck and it was the current carried through the ground and up through the hoofs that killed these servids all at once. So what tends to happen to a live things like humans is that the jolt zips through the body and stops the heart, which is why CPR after a lightning strike can be
life saving. So we should all know how to do that. Probably, and one adages when thunder roars head indoors, you know, unless you want to risk being lightly toasted by the sky. I bet it smells like burned hair. Can you can you smell weather? Are you good at that? Can you smell certain weather? Or is that also a myth?
No?
Sometimes you can, and it just that has to do with the breakdown of the bacteria of leaving in the soil uh.
And in the air. You know, it's that chemical that you're smelling. We'll say when a storm comes passing through.
If you are me and you like to huff the dirt post rain, the smell is called petracore. And it comes from bacteria that make a scent called jasmin, which I want to be my pen name. And if you're like, dang, smell so good, someone should bottle it and sell it. May I direct your attention to Etsy dot com, which offers Petrocore centried oils. They have candles, people make incense. Did I just spend eight dollars and twenty two cents for a small bottle of Petrocore scented oil that smells
like quote a summer storm and a bottle? I did? I did? Also. We are about to get to listener questions, but before we do, we're going to hear about sponsors
of the show who have some deals for you. Those deals make it possible for us to throw some cash at worthwhile nonprofits each episode, and this week Chris asked that it goes to international relief teams, whose mission is to alleviate the suffering caused by poverty and disaster around the globe, from the forgotten corners of the world to right here at home by sending volunteer teams, relief supplies, and other assistant to improve the lives of those who
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All right, questions from our loyal patreon folks. Okay, I'm going to dive in to the lightning round. If he will correct and uh, just whatever answers strike you, go for it.
The worst.
Okay, so many patrons had so many questions and I tried to group them. So first time question asker Hr Bunka, as well as Liz Ropke, Mikaylee Egett, Lee Zoe, Jane B. Wilson, first time question asker Ali Rail, Kyle Evenstein, Hailey vanderwal Don Zwart, Leah Petter, they all had similar questions. Number one, have you seen the movie Sweet Home Alabama? Look at these It's what happens to San Win is struck by lightning. I've seen it. You just have to dig it up.
Yeah.
Do you know what this question is about?
The glass? Yes?
Is that a true thing? Like lightning on sand? What does that do? Hrbunker wants to know?
Yeah? No, so that is true. Okay, it's what it happens is Uh, Typically these beaches.
Are high in a certain type of material. Silica comes to mind, and what it does is the energy from the lightning fuses sand to this material and then you create things out of it.
When you saw that movie where you are already into lightning and fire, or were you just like a like a Brace's face team being like Reese Witherspoon, what a babe?
Yeah, kind of.
I honestly was not on the route to be as wolved in lightning as I was.
It was little vam all right. Yeah, weather first is cool.
Okay. So many people thought that maybe that was not even real, so you've changed their world. Okay. This next question was asked by Jessica Chamberlain, Ali corn Corey Navis, Christian Mahaney, Nathan Wilgaroth Ruby, Johnstone m and first time question asker Tamina Schalls. Temina had so many questions but wanted to know. All of these people wanted to know how dangerous is it to shower or use the computer
during a thunderstorm? Is it true that you shouldn't use the shower when it is thundering and lightning?
Yeah, I mean a good rule of being outside is get the heck out of the pool, right or the lake or the river, and when you're inside for proper lightning safety measures.
Yeah, you kind of want to do the same thing.
Get away from anything that's electrically circuited or water as best as you can. And because that's just electrical charges are going to find those channels to travel through because.
It's easy for it to travel through, So you know, do your best. I probably would. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who are like.
Ooh, a lightning storm, gonna go take a shower. But you know, but it can be dangerous. You're better off just not being there, Okay, shower or next to any sort of electrical circuitry.
Okay, good to know. So just to take a load off, take a gander, lay Low, good to know. Jesse Markowitz, Jake Skuyler, Alexander Brown, and just one wanted to know. Is there lightning on other planets?
Oh? Absolutely there is. Yeah, It's it's not something that I've really doven into. But Jupiter gets a ton of lightning.
What Yeah?
Crazy?
I mean, the dang things have got the storm the size of side of another planet on it. Yeah, so it's going to produce a lot of lightning, and it's very similar processes that happens here on Earth, I believe.
Okay, just a side note. I know that Jupiter has a huge ruddy beauty mark that is really just a whirl of meteorological chaos. But I was like, what is that big red spot called? I feel like I know it by a camera, right, So I looked it up and it's called the Great Red Spot. That's like if you named your firstborn child the baby thing. It's clear, it's bold, it's a choice.
And then Saturn is kind of another big one. And I'm sure someone out there is studying space lightning and you know, sees all kinds of cool crap. But yeah, I do know that there's lightning on other planets. You know, there's similar processes between electrical charges. It's the universal.
I'm going to have to find an astrofolminologist. There's got everyone out there.
Somebody, yeah, oh yeah, there's gotta be somebody out there.
Let's see. First time question asker Jean McLean Gabriel Freisen. First time question asker Hope All wanted to know. So, in Hope's words, so when people get struck by lightning, to get those scars that look like lightning, So what causes those? Have you seen those?
You know, that'd probably be someone more in tune to dealing with injuries and medical Yeah. I don't know how those scars are formed. I know Harry Potter got his, Yeah, you know, from a.
Very high energy concentrated spell.
Yes, I don't recommend it, no, but exactly what's going on inside of the body that causes it to get those specific scars.
I'm not sure.
Okay, of course I look this up and these raised marks are called Liechtenberg figures, and they're caused by blood vessels explode vading from the heat and the electric discharge of those branching fractally patterns of the lightning. And they look first and foremost very ouchy, and secondly they're gorgeous. They're weirdly so pretty also painful. If you go to instagram dot com slash ologies this week, I will treat you to a gallery. Oh the scars, the blisters, the intrigue.
Do human beings walk around with a certain electrical.
Charge they can?
There's uh, I mean there's Our bodies are transporting electrons and stuff all the time, and our brains are constantly standing out and receiving electrical signals.
Okay, if you've ever touched something and gotten like a little zip spark, congrats, that's pretty much mini lightning. But let's talk about even bigger effects, like giant mind blowing ones, like big Bang scale effects.
These electromagnetic discharges from lightning.
I've actually been shown to antimatter, which is pretty freaking cool. So yeah, so these these charges produce really high I'm strong gamma rays and X rays, so really high frequencies, and the gamma rays react with the air that's around it and produce positrons positron prime.
Yeah, I like that. I think that if it was a transformer.
But it creates positrons, which are kind of the antimatter version of electrons. And so what happens is after they produce these and they run around and these gamma rays, there's so much energy, they knock the neutrons out of nitrogen, and that unstable nitrogen then releases the positrons and then eventually, you know, they'll end up finding an electron, collide with it, and they annihilate each other.
Oh my god.
Yeah, So imagine imagine you just walking around on the street and all of a sudden, uh, an anti alley comes up and you guys bump into each other and then you're just gone and you unihilate each other.
Is that possible on Is it possible to look at how that happens with lightning and like figure out how to do that on Earth?
I don't, I don't know. Bizarre Superman had some trouble with Bizarro Superman.
So I'm not sure that, but yeah, no, that's that's something that's really cool. These uh, these researchers in Japan, we're actually the ones just like, yeah, it creates antimatter, freaking positrons.
Oh my god, that's amazing. And a bunch of listeners had a really good question. Stephen Clark, sid Got Kajar, Adam Weaver, Haley Bandawal, Katie Coast, Nicole Wackery, Ross Owen Qualls, and Hugh Plumber all wanted to know. Is capturing lightning a viable energy source?
Oh?
Man, this is crazy, right, this is okay, okay. So the thing is that lightning produces so much elector there's there's so much energy there. You're talking somewhere between like one hundreds to a billion volts of current possible there. And so my research associate and I have actually kind.
Of dove into this.
And what you would have to do is you would have to find a way of putting up some sort of rod or at least our idea. Nobody's steal this because we're working on it.
Is you take something and Ryan, as the lightning start is about to happen, you give it a really strong charge so that it has the highest charge of anything out there. So lightning essentially is attracted to this thing. You know, you're a really very attraction.
Maybe it looks like a tree, and so when lightning strikes it. You would have to do is you'd have to have a really really strong, negatively charged base so that it helps kind of contain into in a uh, some of that energy. But at the same time you would have to maybe keep that energy flowing so that that that you would get is maybe direct current, and
you would have to keep that current flowing. And what you would probably have to do is it would have to go into some sort of station where it's able to be broken up or able to be chopped up and then distributed to other parts, because you don't want a million vaults going.
To people's homes.
Right.
That's about a million times more more voltage than then you then comes out of your little electric.
Socket, say so is it possible? Ah? Man, it's it's really tough.
I know, Tesla, the old old Nikola Tesla, that guy m hm he uh, he was kind of working on it, at least he was thinking about it. So that's what that's what he was working on when he was there in Colorado. Oh, radio way, just you're sending frequencies back and forth.
I had no idea that there were frequencies involved. I do remember that he was in love with a pigeon, which I know that there was so much more to his story, But is.
That what you got out of his whole career? What was the vision's name that? I don't know.
He was so in love though, and I really felt for him Fred.
I don't know.
I really felt for him I know he did so much, But that part I really connected with. I was like, I get it that Pigure's never going to love you, okay, just because I know that we're all wondering and we all want to name something after it. This pigeon's name was not Fred. It was a lady pigeon, a brilliant white pigeon with gray tips at the end of its wings. And Tesla once said, quote, I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me as long as I had her. There was a purpose to
my life. So it was requited that changes everything. Although it did make a final visit to him in his hotel room in nineteen twenty two, and by his account, her eyes shone a brilliant, burning white light, and it was a message that she was dying. And he said he knew at that moment that his life's work, which involved huge, history changing accomplishments in electricity and plasma and radio waves, he knew at that moment his work was over.
But he also remained celibate and never married ever, partly because he thought it would interfere with those accomplishments. And you know what they say, doves before loves. Okay, Sean Johnson wants to know canna bolts of lightning actually produce one point one jigger watts of power.
Oh my gosh, that's great.
I'm assuming he's referring to the old back to the future.
Yep, old Doc Brown.
Yeah, I love that, My god, what what the hell?
I'm not sure if it's that much or not. Yeah, I think give me a second here.
Yeah, are you gonna do some back of the envelope calculations? Yeah, calculus is happening.
Uh yeah, it's uh yeah, they can produce one point two on uh jigawatts?
Really? Yeah?
Nice.
I can't believe we actually got to ask a lighting scientist.
I mean, there's there's obviously a range of jigawatts that lighting produces, but yeah, I think it could be it's in there.
Wow. Okay, we finally know that. That's amazing. All right. If you're mad at me right now because I said jigawats and not gigawatts, please blame Back to the Future writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gail, who thought gigawatts were pronounced jigawats, and so they spilled it with a J and there's script and they shot the whole movie, and
then afterward they're like, oh, it's gigawatts. People that have Google also pronouncing it with the J sound like jigawats is technically the very old method of speaking this word. So it is likely that the Back to the Future writers heard an older recording or a professor used the softer J sound, and that's why they spelled it wrong. And that's why a lot of us say it wrong.
It's like, if only we could ask the person who named gigawatts how they wanted it pronounced, like we can the creator of the jiff who says it's pronounced jiff and don't at me, I'm your Internet dad. How dare you? Okay, A few patrons wanted to know about flaming Spinney's, such as first time question askers Rachel Noble, Alyssa Rose, and Jamie Almodovar first time asking a question. Are fire tornadoes a real thing? How often do they occur? If so?
Oh shit, I love this question.
Fired tornadoes, spinning, rotating convective vortex is of terror. No, So we're going to to break it down a little bit here, okay, And a true fire tornado has a very specific definition. Of course, the media loves the term fire tornado or fire nato because it sounds a lot more badass and firewhirl right honestly, I mean, come on, the only thing more bad ass than a fire tornado would be a fire sharknado, and we haven't seen those yet,
but I can't wait until that happens. So most of the time, what you're seeing or fire worlds, they're also fire devils, which are the equivalent of a dust devil just a fire.
But most of.
What you see out there and fires are either fire worlds which are on the smaller end, or convective rotating vortex you know, in meteorology or in any sort of weather stuff. If it's got the name vortex in it, it's usually really cool. Okay, so we loved, we love to call things vortex.
Yeah.
So a true fire tornado, there's actually only been a couple maybe three, that we've been able to observe, at least since we've had the technology and capabilities to do so. So in order for it to be a true fire tornado, you have to have something that's rotating violently, and it has to be connected to the ground and to a cloud, so to some sort of cumulus cloud, whether it's a queless formation in the sky or a thunderhead or a pyrocumulus.
There was a nearby canine who crashed our recording and was very excited to chime in about this. So when you hear it, just pretend this conversation is like happen on a country porch off swing with your favorite lightning buddy. This is just ambiance.
Cloud up above, and that has to have some sort of rotation as well.
Most of the quote unquote what people call fire tornadoes aren't typically connected to that cumulus cloud up there in the atmosphere, so then it's usually just the fire world. Oh okay, yeah, but so if we're going by that, the true definition of a fire tornado, In other words, a tornado as defined as rotating, violently rotating column of air that is connected to the ground and to the cloud.
Only one that is made from fire. There really has only been a couple that we know of or have been able to see. The one. I'm sure you've probably heard all about, the one that happened in the Loyalton fire just recently.
Yes, yeah, okay, So just to refresh your memory, this was August fifteenth, twenty twenty, near Hallelujah Junction in California by the Nevada border, northwest of Reno, and Tasha Ferrell aka that one girl talkt on Twitter captured video of the dry Golden Chaparral of the Sierras with this raging brush fire and a column of spiraling smoke in the middle. Reaction all over the world was really unifying.
What the fuck?
Twenty twenty one?
Yeah, that one actually true fire tornado. And the cool thing about that is, even though they might have had a little bit of warning ahead of time, the National Weather Service was able to issue a tornado warning. And pretty sure that's never been done before because fire tornadoes or fireworlds are extremely difficult to predict, so that was kind of a stepping stone in the cool science of
fire behavior and fire tornadoes. Is the fact that the National Weather Service was actually able to issue a tornado warning for that particular event, which really cool.
That kind of dovetails into a first time question. Asker Val Lucas wanted to know, how do the lightning tracker maps up date so fast? Like the flash out the window and then the dot popping up on the map are instantaneous. So is technology getting better to track this stuff?
Oh? Absolutely, absolutely, and it's really cool. I mean it's come a long way.
I mean before I use to not be able to get lightning updates for every so many minutes or so or hours, and now a lightning mapp.
Will update every fifteen seconds.
How do they do that?
Where they do that? It's really cool.
I mean, so when lightning strikes give out these electromagnetic pulses, the satellite systems are able to pick.
Up on those, Oh yeah.
Like pretty much instantaneously almost so then it just gets sent back down to, you know, to whatever modeling system is being used. And technology is great. Computer programmers are even better, and they're able to make this stuff work in close to real time.
Oh. Katie Coast, who does a lot of transcription for us, it is amazing, says it bothers me that they call Thor the god of thunder because that's a sound. Right, he should be the god of lightning. Wants to know. Does that bug you too?
I think he's badass either way.
Okay, but yes, he should be Thor god of lightning because you don't have thunder without lightning, right, So yeah, he.
Really should be the god of lightning. You know what, that's a good point.
I've never really sat there and pick picked it apart and threw a fit because of it, But now that I think of it, yeah, he should be the god of lightning.
Why not. It's lightning that he summons and uses.
You know, Glad you have something to be bad about.
He's not going around going take that.
I'm really loud. I'm really loud, and that's my power. Actually, we did have a people ask Emily A wants to know is it true that thunder is the sound of lightning? And a few other people wanted to know. First time question askers and boot quakers, Luna Lowry and Kate h why it's so scary? Why is thunder scary? Any idea? Is it a certain like frequency or is it just because it's so loud?
Well, i'd be perception right. Some might find it scary.
I would find it extremely fascinating and joyous, somewhat of an adrenaline Russia at certain moments. Yeah, but yeah, thunder is the sound of lightning, because without lightning you don't have thunder, kind of like we talked about.
And because lightning there's so much energy and so much heat that is created by lightning that energy, the air around it cannot expand fast enough, so pressure is shot out around these areas where lightning strike has just gone down and produces a shockwave, and that shockwave becomes a sound wave, and so that's what we hear thunder.
It can be really scary because the ground is shaking, the airs rumbling. It sounds like a war zone out there. Sometimes you have no idea when that lightning strike is going to happen or where it's going to happen, so you run for your life and hiding a corner under the bed or something like that and just wait for it to get over.
So, yeah, I guess I could be scary.
I heard I heard a little dog in the background. How does that dog do with lightning and thunder?
That is my neighbor's dog.
Okay, so you're like, I don't know.
It comes out. Yeah, I don't know. It's a little one, so I'm assuming it doesn't do too good. I don't know. Yeah, even big ones. Man, I used to have a dog that did not like it.
Hence thundershirts or pressure garments for pups and people alike who knew that consistent gentle pressure or like a hug, releases anxiety soothing hormones. Well, scientists and also people, but not makers of girdles. You just you went too far with those. Reel it in a little A bunch of people.
Sam Healey, first time question asker, JJ Pierce, Chris Moore, first time question asker Rachel Dashiel and Asia Jaeger wanted to know about hair standing up during a thunderstorm, and Sam says, my shoulder length hair was standing completely on end once when I was standing in a field during a thunderstorm, and I found out later that was not
a good sign. I was fourteen, so forgive my ignorance, but if you're around something dangerous like a lightning storm, or does your hair just statically kind of do that.
Yeah, it's a reaction to the static that's in the atmosphere. So what's happening during a lightning event is you're producing something that's electric and magnetic, and there's electrostatic that's happening before these light stricture coming or as a storm is approaching. Oh, we know this because part of what we do is we go out there with something that reads electromagnetism.
Dude, there's no electricity in here.
We shouldn't be getting any emf not to try and find ghosts or anything or spirits, but to try and find and look at the magnetic properties of a storm that comes through a lightning event. And you can see that the em meter, you know, fluctuates a lot. I mean we'll hit high note at the time that a
storm's overhead. So if there's a storm approaching, especially if there's that much build up of an electrical charge a static in the atmosphere, yeah, your hairs are gonna rise right on up, just like the old uh you know, rub a balloon on the carpet, put on your head and watch your hair go all over the place.
Does that mean you should run for cover somewhere, preferably not under a big tree that's by itself.
Yeah, you know, unless those are just your spidy seen it says Tingling a little bit. I'd probably, you know, move because it's definitely a sign that there's something electrically going on in the atmosphere. And you don't want to be around when those when those lightning strikes come down.
Now, some people would want to go out in a lightning storm on purpose. And chiong Nan wants to know how true is the Ben Franklin story, the key, the kite? Is it all bullshit?
No, this actually happens, So lucky enough for you. I went back and read all the original letters that Ben Franklin was sending to his colleague about the experiments he was doing with electricity, and actually one of my favorite quotes evers from.
One of those okay, quick aside. Chris sent this Ben Franklin passage to me later and it was written around April seventeen forty nine, and it reads quote, if they are driven by winds against mountains, those mountains, being less electrified, attract them. If much loaded the electrical fire is at once taken from the whole cloud, and in leaving it
flashes brightly and it cracks loudly. And from what I gather, Franklin also sometimes referred to lightning storms or lightning bolts as thunder gusts, which honestly is like an ACES term for flatulence anyway.
But yeah, he was so he basically was just trying to show how electricity works and how you get a separation of charges and you get a build up of static. And he went, Okay, well, hey, guess what. There's electricity in the atmosphere. There's electricity in the sky. So in order to show this experiment, he goes out and throw something up there, something that he knows is going to attract the electrical charges that are in the sky.
Kite.
There's a perfect thing for that, and lo and behold he shows, hey, there is electricity up there.
There are several people who wrote in this boggled me, saying that a lot of people in their family had been hit. Renee of David and Renees Woodworking and Marty Goodwin and May May is the first time question ask her, and so are Renee and David. I'll read May's question. Omg exclamation exclamation point. So my partner and my brother and I were all struck by lightning at the same time, well fishing, I know, all unharmed.
I know.
I'm wondering about what things people who survived being struck by lightning may experience, like any long term medical side effects. But ps I found out later that my mom and her brother were struck at the same time, and their grandfather and his sister were struck at the same time. And then Marty Goodwin says, my family is prone to attracting lightning. I guess two members of their family have
been struck, one fatally. And then Renee and David said that multiple people on the mom's side of the family have all been struck by lightning and lived. What the hell's going on?
What in the hell I can't courage that many listeners that know sperience, but this I haven't met anybody yet who's.
Actually been struck. Holy crap.
I mean, oh my gosh, I mean the people who who are struck at the same time. Okay, obviously they're well I guess maybe not obviously. Sorry I shouldn't say that, but they're in and undergoing the same electrical experience at the same time. So just like the cows in the field are just like the reindeer. They're in an area that is highly charged, and that charge wants to try and neutralize itself. So it's going to try and find a path that it can extend itself through the fact.
That there are multiple people in an area during the same event that all got struck, isn't too surprising.
Why it's happening to some people's family members more. You know, that's a really good question. I would probably start to question it myself.
Yeah, I would be like, I guess we're cursed someone, there's an oracle, someone pissed off. I don't know, I'll look into it. Okay, you were in no way cursed. JKJJK. You are exciting and special because you just impressed a professional folmonologist, which I imagine is hard to do. Also, I've looked for any scientific evidence that getting struck by lightning could possibly run in families was genetic, and honestly, the only thing I could come up with is that
maybe it's hereditary to just enjoy the outdoors. And one commenter on a kra discussion on the matter, who is not a lightning expert, mind you said. Quote the idea that some people have some mysterious trait that somehow attracts lightning as nonsense, a myth, balder dash and hogwash. End quote.
Okay.
Impressed by the vocab tones a little salty, however, really, what the hell does anyone know? Scientists used to explain bird migration by confidently saying that during the winter, all the birds just went and hung out on the moon. We don't know anything. We're all such stupid babies, even scientists. They're just trying to figure it out. It's beautiful. Okay, let's keep this knowledge fire arraging. Okay, a few people
Metal and Lewis and Markshavaz, Metal and Lewis. Person time question asker want to know about volcanic lightning or wildfire smoke inducing lightning? Does that happen?
Oh? Yeah, absolutely so. They kind of have similar components to them.
So they're called pyrocumulus clouds, which are the cumulus clouds that are formed by fire or by lightning, and then they can later evolve sometimes if enough heat and moisture charges being pumped into them to create pyrochumulonimous clouds and for the ones that produce lightning. So what you have is during a fire, especially, is fire's burning and it's
releasing a lot of energy through heat and moisture. So much energy and so much heat, and you see this more often on really really hot fires that are burning really really hot. We get something called pyrocnvection, which is eventually that heat and that moisture starts to rise.
Because hot air rises.
It mixes with the cooler air and kind of like a typical thunderstorm, as it arises, it starts to condense, and it starts to form humulus clouds or pyrocumulus clouds. And the crazy thing is that the updrafts of this hot air rising, the updrafts of these suckers can reach like up to one hundred miles per hour.
Oh my god.
Yeah, So there's just there's so much going in there.
So if the fire continuously pumping that heat and that moisture into these cumulus clouds, they keep growing and growing and growing, and you get more vertical movement until eventually pyrocumulanimous cloud is formed, and then you start to get kind of that charge the charge separation. You get the banging around of those those particles up there produced from the ash and from the smoke that allow the moisture to kind of condense on them, which then helps create the passing of charges.
Like we talked about. You'll get lightning from that, or you can get lightning from that. Oh, and it's very similar kind of with volcanoes. Because volcanoes so much heat and they're releasing all that gas and the ash material creating these really dense smoke plumes, they start to create a static ionization in a sense, and you get all these charged particles ready to go, you know, all happy and excited, an adrenaline rush for them again, and they
can produce lightning. So it's really cool. Yeah, pictures of volcanic lightning are actually really sick. I don't know if you or anybody out.
There listening has ever seen pictures of volcanic lightning if you haven't looked it up, because yeah, it's hella sick.
It's hell hella sick.
Bro the most cal Northern California, scuy.
I love it.
I looked it up and it's true. Volcanic lightning pictures are hella sweet. And they look like if a mountain had a midlife crisis and decided to become a heavy metal disco like Smoke Machine, Strobe Lights danger, Like if you looked through the plumes of ash, there has got to be a yetty in there doing a guitar solo. I have just a couple more questions from listeners because I know, I'm just I literally we could go on
for hours, okay. Elizabeth Edwards and Rachel and Maria Jora Vivia Elizabeth Rachel, both first time question askers, wanted to know a little bit more about like what percentage of wildfires are caused by lightning strikes globally, and also are these wildfires changing because of climate change? And should we be using more indigenous land management to kind of prevent the big burns.
I've been waiting for a question like this, ha ha. Yeah, we know in climate's going to come into it.
So yeah, well, I'm not quite sure exactly what the global statistics are.
In the US, I know.
Roughly eighty to ninety percent of fires are caused by humans and then the other percent caused by lightning, so ten to twenty percent, But that also depends on the region you're in, So you know, some areas of the Southwest, or say Alaska might or Montana or Idaho might have a lot more lightning caused fires or a greater percentage of lightning caused fires than other places. Australia too, they
get quite a few lightning caused fires. And you look at places like Australia or Alaska, you know, it's not uncommon for them to have kind of like what we had here, you know, one hundred lightning caused fires within a twenty.
Four hour period.
But overall, human cause fires are kind of the big one. Yeah, And we actually don't mind lightning caused fires unless they're during events such as is the one that we just had here in California, or unless it's a fire itself producing some sort of lightning activity, because a lot of the lightning caused fires that happens tend to happen in
remote areas where we're trying to get around to this. Okay, if it's happening in an area far off somewhere in the mountains, let it burn it, let it ravage the fuel and take over.
So Chris says that lightning caused fires really become an issue when they're related to an event like the one we had recently here in California where there were hundreds of them at once, which with new weather patterns and droughts and warmer, drier weather, may happen more often.
Yeah, so climate change is one of the big issues obviously as we treat into fires and even the possibility of more lightning and lightning caused fires, because climate change or global warming brings more extremes, and we might see more extreme and heat during summertimes in certain states of the Western US. And more heat is not a good scenario for fire because that also brings lower humidities, and fire likes to burn in high heat and low humidity.
And we're also starting to see some really extreme wind events that we typically haven't seen before, I haven't recognized before. I mean some places during these fire events, you'll see gusts of wind up to like eighty miles per hour, and you're just like, holy shit, how do you even do something with that? Yeah, you know, and you don't.
That's the thing is you get the hell out of the way and let the fire kind of go. And we're just we're not used to this kind of change yet. And unfortunately we're also in a place here in California specifically, where you get typically you get rained during winter seasons and then fuel and vegetation grows, and then it gets extremely hot and dry in the summertime, and then that vegetation grows out.
So there's a lot more fuel for there to burn. Well.
At the same time, you get these extreme drought conditions that a lot of places are experiencing, and that's not good because then you don't get the rain to help the fuel moisture levels. So you're kind of fighting a losing game. As things start to change here, and we see this positive feedback loop with climate change. Not only that, but the Arctic, the Arctic Circle. If you or any of your followers, any guys out there, saw the Arctic Circle reaching above one hundred degrees.
This year, you know.
And we're starting to see more and more fires burning out there, and so there's there's a lot that has to be taken in. There's a lot that needs to be studied. Of course, we cannot tie one single event or one single fire to climate change, but we can step back and look at the overall factors that made it possible.
Yes, there is something within climate change that is adding to the extreme offense that we're seeing and if things are burning hotter, then you're going to see more and stronger fire behavior. I'm wanting to see more extreme fire behavior. Yeah, I mean the future fire research. There's going to be so much research.
That that's going to be cool to do in the Arctic areas from unfortunate consequences.
Yeah, So this research is important and you should get some dollar bills for it.
Yeah, definitely, you know, everybody should.
Yeah, something that is also very very important in research as you can throw all the money at it you want, and you can get all the answers and collect all the data you want to. And it's great to have that knowledge because it might lead to something in the future.
But if some of that knowledge isn't implemented at the policy level, then you have a lot tougher time for sure, you know, with what's going on and trying to get everybody, the local, the state, the federal, and the indigenous people all on the same page to work together is tough. And when things change, because the climate change global warming, makes it even tougher.
And uh. And so when it comes to voting, think about which representatives might give more of a darn about it.
Yeah, you know, it's it's it's it's always tough.
But if you're looking at something as big as climate change, yeah, you know, find find the people who are who were going after it, and you know, try and get there.
To get out there and and vote so maybe they can help do something.
And you know, the the fire industry has has been undergoing a really big culture shift in the past so many years, and that's because of probably a lot of of you and and your listeners have noticed that you're starting to hear more and more about prescribed and controlled burns and forest thinning and indigenous or cultural burning, and that is because.
We do need it.
Yeah, it's definitely become a problem, especially here in California.
We have some serious land management issues and a lot of there's reasons that we might get some of these mega fires or big fires is because there's such a build up of fuel or vegetation growth that these fires are just they're able to burn hotter, and they're consuming more and there's more energy to be released by them, so you get more actually fire behavior coupled with the wind events that are happening, and so cultural burns along with prescribed burns is kind of a way to kind
of help manage the forest so that we take the process of burning in forest restoration and are able to bring it, I guess more in a sense of our control. So we would rather perform prescribed or cultural burns, which burn range land and forested area it's at a lower, more of a moderate intensity, so that they can regrow, so that wildlife can come back to areas, so that streams and rivers have a chance to reflow, so that
fish can spawn, and all this sort of stuff. So we would rather have that, and we would rather be able to kind of help dictate where that is occurring than big build up and large fires happening that are very high intensity, because those are the ones that do more damage, and those are the ones we're trying to get away from. Indigenous and cultural burning is something we really want to do a lot more of because it's something that they'd been doing for a long time and have down themselves.
And not only because preventing them from doing so can be culturally repressive, but the fact that they know what they're doing because they've been doing it for a while really helps. And there's a lot that can be learn from the way that they manage the forest and manage their lands in order to do the rest orate or practices.
What if we just raked the forest like they do in Europe. Can't you just rake the forest, sweep up the forest.
You gotta take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest very important.
Yeah, you know, you can try. It can take all yeah, oh my god, well you know whatever, Like you just got to.
Rake them raking the forest super simple, kind of just like maricondoing the linen closet. Clean it up. Shame on California for not sweeping the thirty three million acres of thick vegetation on forested lands PS the US is fifty six percent woods, according to the twenty sixteen Forest Inventory and Analysis Program of the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. So grab those brooms, garbage bags. It's our fault. Actually,
it kind of is. Since North American colonization and the gen side of indigenous people, ecosystems have suffered a bunch from the lack of indigenous fire stewardship also called cultural burning. And this is a huge, huge, rich topic historically currently which we're going to cover in a future Wildlife ecology episode. But for now you can seek out information like casey et has a series called Tending the Wild. They have
a whole episode on cultural burning. I myself cannot wait to talk to an expert in this and hear about the heroes who are fighting for this repressed practice. Now, on the topic of that, Brook wants to know what kind of superpowers will I get when I am struck by lightning? What are we looking at?
I don't condute it. I would say you're most likely not going to get them. Yeah, of course we see this in movies and stuff all the time. Yeah, hasn't stopped me from going out during lightning storms, get it?
But I mean the flash lightning?
Yeah, really fast, extremely i' metabolism and healing rate can throw bolts of lightning.
Damn good deal. Any movies get lightning, right?
Yeah? I mean, Well, here's the thing.
Yeah, there's every movie that you see that's about some sort of weather event or geologic event takes it to the most extreme you could ever you could ever imagine.
So the scenario is that they paint in those movies. Are they realistic? No? But my favorite description of lightning is actually from the movie Frank and WEENI. I don't know if you ever saw that at the Disney movie Frank and Weenie and Familiar It's starts the beginning of the movie and the kids are in class and the teacher is describing how lightning works.
Please enjoy this clip from Tim Burton's twenty twelve stop motion supernatural horror comedy film about a corpse dog.
Lightning is simply electricity. The cloud is angry, yes, making strong. Only electrons are saying, I am leaving you. I go to the lend of opportunity. The ground says, yes, we need electrons trained and science just like you.
Come, Come, welcome.
So both sides start to build.
The ladder, and the kids are just frightened the death of this because of the way.
He's explaining it.
But I really love the way that he describes it, in the way he describes the process of electrons trying to get back to the Motherland. Of all the movies, that's probably my favorite use of lightning is Frank and Winnie.
Oh, I'm putting it in.
He does not see the invisible ladders one, the two ladders meet, boom, the scut is complete.
Oh. Last listener question, John Worster, Irock, Ray, Hannaquist, Mikaylee Egot, and first time question asker Tiffany mus Alis want to know fact or flim flam lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice?
Well, in general, it can strike.
The same place twice, right, the lightning rots right?
Depends on how small of the scale you want to get. I mean, when these when lightning strikes the ground, you know, you're talking about electrons and protons connecting things that are tiny.
Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny tiny.
So if you want to get down to the microscopic scale, maybe it doesn't strike the same place twice, but generally, yeah, it.
Can strike the same place twice.
Ah, Yeah, absolutely, I guess it's how you define the same place.
Yeah, get into the little little, the tiny, tiny tiny details. Okay, questions I always ask again, what sucks the most about lightning? What do you hate the most about your job? Just what's like that?
It would probably be trying to trying to get.
People realize that the research we're doing with lightning is more important than the other research out there and meteorology and fire weather in order to get the funding for it, because it's not easy.
So of course, everything science comes down to how much money can you get for it? Yeah, can you do the research itself?
What is your favorite thing about your work or about lightning or what keeps you just gives you butterflies?
I would have to say just the fascination of it, The fascination of trying to understand lightning in itself, trying to get out there and do the research. Knowing that there's so many any questions to be answered and seeing lightning happen and knowing that at some point we can contribute something to this knowledge base is very exciting in itself, and the fact that we're not there yet and the
fact that there is more to do. I mean right now, we're at a point where our models can get better, they can always get better, and so knowing that they can always get better and we don't have things nailed down specifically, and seeing how things are constantly changing and seeing how it's impacting society is a big motivational factor because we know what's at risk, we know what changes might be coming about, we know that they may not be good, and so we have a real opportunity to
do something. We have a real opportunity to to help an industry seek some sort of answers, get out there and look at fire tornadoes and fire world.
We get to see lightning storms shoot down from the sky.
We get to go out there during some of these storm events, which I know told people you shouldn't do, but we go out there during some of these storm events and just blow right through them, you know, and just get inundated with the rain and you know, and how.
These storms come.
Uh So, so that in itself, even though that is a very small portion of what we're actually doing, because a lot of it is sitting down and analyzing shit, it's those little bits in that field work that's extremely, extremely exciting.
Mm hm.
That's part of kind of what got you into it, I'm sure.
Right, oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, what is more exciting than something that is one point one jigawatts one point one yeah, how many whatever? Sorry jig hotter than the sun? Seemingly random, but science can explain it. I mean, that's like, what's more exciting than like bolts of electricity coming from the heavens. That's rat oh I know, right, yeah, it's super rad. I mean, you're my favorite folmonologist. You are the only fomonologist I know. But you are my favorite legitimately appreciate that. So ask
smart people stupid questions because it might spark some great ideas. Also, someone just throw a dumb truck full of money at Climate and Fire Research if you don't mind. Thank you so much. Also, you can follow Chris on Twitter at see Gezag thirty nine or Instagram at Chris gisege and he says, if you can spell my name right, then you deserve to follow me. And it's in the title, folks. Plus, links to his social media are in the show notes. You can also follow ologies at ologies on Twitter and
on Instagram. Please do I'm on both. Also at ali Ward with one L on Everything and more notes are at aliward dot com slash ologies slash Fulminology. That link is also in the show notes, as is a link to ologies merch dot com, which sells t shirts for twenty bucks. We keep them affordable because I just really love to see y'all wearing him in the wild, making new ologies friends. You can tag photos with Ologies merch
on Instagram and we repost you. Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy podcast You Are That manage all the merch. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the Facebook group of over fifteen thousand peaceful kind spart people and Hello ologies redditors to thank you to everyone on patreon dot com slash ologies for literally funding the show and submit such good questions. Thank you to Emily White and the group of transcribers for getting all these episodes transcribed
for our deaf and heart of hearing pals. Those are up for free for anyone who wants transcripts at Alleyward dot com slash Ologies dash Extras, alongside a bunch of bleeped episodes you can download if you have kiddos or classes to teach. Thank you to Caleb Patten for bleeping and thank you to Noel Dilworth for helping me schedule interviews.
Thank you to assistant editor Shared Sleeper who cuts out all my oms but not mysswears, and of course to the Pod of Thunder Stephen ray Thoris, who also hosts the per cast about kiddies and see Jurassic Right, which
is about dinosaurs, two fine programs. Nick Thorbern wrote and performed the theme music and if you stick it out through the credits, I divulge a secret of some sort and this week's secret as My favorite lightning storm ever was once in high school, my sister Janelle and I sat at the window in the living room and we just watched these wicked bulls bolz dash across the sky like for I think a few hours, just listening to Enya, just in silence, listening to Enya on a boombox.
It was so rad.
Okay, enjoy the thunder and the lightning. Duck for cover. And hey, remember, if Roy Sullivan can live through seven lightning strikes, you can cut banks, you can text your crush, start your novel. We're all going to be bones anyway, but then our bones will become plants and frogs and rocks, which is pretty dope. Okay, wear a mask, be cool to each other for bye. Hacadermatology, hombiology, r doo, zoology, lithology, Yeah, namnology, meteorology, pertology, nathology, seriology, selenology.
Ryan started the fire.
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