One of my most loyal readers sent me the following email, this incident happened outside his office:
Might be blogworthy. I thought lightning was suppose to protect you if you are in a car…the wheels being rubber and grounded to the road or some poppycock! Guess not huh? No one was hurt but condolences to [Name Withheld], our Jeep driving planner who will be needing a ride home this evening.
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I know there is a great liberal Christian contingency reading Keith's blog so I guess I should add that this is Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. Could this be a hand of God telling us to "KNOCK IT OFF?"
🙂
This could easily have been caused by any kind of fire. Given that the vehicle is no higher then its surroundings I doubt that it was caused by lightening.
I think the reason that you are protected from lightning in a car isn’t because of the wheels it’s because of the car forms a Faraday cage. The lightning takes the path of least resistance to the ground which is the metal of the roof.
This jeep probably had a cloth roof which caught fire when the metal getting struck by lightning heated up from all the current.
It was a “witnessed” lightning strike with one minor exception. It is actually 4 rows over from LM in our sister company, Vought’s parking lot. I had to do a drive by on the way home to confirm and the insurance weenies were clicking away.
We convened a nerdy, engineer, water cooler meeting to discuss said grounding. I have since learned that cars are not grounded but rather insulated from lightning strikes which is complete news to me.
Kudos to Jo. You appear to have hit it on the head.