The photographer was filming the ocean. Then he realized something shocking. Who doesn’t love a day at the beach? The hot sun, the warm sand, and a beautiful view of the ocean to rejuvenate your soul. For those who like to vacation in Daytona Beach, Florida, soaking up the rays with the sea of other beachgoers is nothing new.
Although a lot of people might prefer sunny weather to get a good tan, others would rather take advantage of a deserted beach on a rainy day. When one man chose the latter, he actually captured something pretty incredible on film. The footage below was taken in Daytona Beach by a man named Clint Blevins. It was a rainy day in June when he shot the video, which is presumably why the beach appears completely empty. But it’s still just as gorgeous, with the gray sky, rolling waves, and overall calmness.
Shortly into the video, Mother Nature has an interruption to make. A huge bolt of lightning can be seen striking the ocean far in the distance. However, it’s not why Clint’s footage went viral. Watching a storm is certainly mesmerizing, but lightning can be extremely dangerous too. According to National Geographic, lightning takes approximately 2000 lives a year across the globe.
Fortunately, most do survive a lightning strike, although there can be some long term side effects like memory loss, numbness, weakness, dizziness, and more. They also say that a typical American has around one in 50 odds of being struck during their lifetime. Clint was still filming when another bolt of lightning hit the water. This one was a lot closer, though. We’ve all seen lightning a million times in the sky, and perhaps some that made you say whoa.
Clint’s footage, however, shows a strike that seems like it’s straight out of a superhero movie. It’s almost like there’s a huge, scary explosion in the ocean at first. But once dreary sky lights up bright along with the beach as well happen in the blink of an eye. After giving the appearance of an explosion, the magnificent bolt can be seen striking the water. The area stays illuminated because of its intense brightness.
The National Severe Storms Laboratory website says lightning can have 100 million to 1 billion volt and contains billions of watts. When Clint Blevins shared the video on YouTube, he titled it Lightning in Slow Motion. His footage allows you to see the lightning bolt up close and enjoy its changing appearance as well. Yet all of it takes place within the same few seconds. The sky dims and goes back to normal after the strike.
Immediately, a clap of thunder can be heard. You can tell how close lightning is with a little calculation. According to the National Weather Service, they explain if you count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder and then divide by five, you’ll get the distance in miles to the lightning 5 seconds. Seconds equals 1 mile. 15 seconds equals 3 miles.
0 second very close. It’s obvious that Clint didn’t even need to do any calculating to determine the lightning was very close. He could see it right before his eyes. The world is full of beauty that you can experience out in nature. However, it’s not every day that you see something like this up close, let alone captured on film.
If you’re looking to see some epic lightning storms, Florida is the place to be. In the US. About 1.45 million lightning strikes are seen in that state every year. It’s actually been dubbed the lightning capital of the US. Central Florida specifically has been dubbed Lightning Alley as lightning storms occur 100 days out of the year.
Central Florida runs from Tampa on the west coast to Titusville on the east coast. Daytona beach is just north of Titusville. Getting hit by lightning is incredibly dangerous as of 100 million and 1 billion volt, and reach temperatures that are five times hotter than the sun’s surface. However, the odds of being struck by lightning during one’s lifetime 80 years in the US. Are about one in $13,000.
The odds of being killed or injured by a strike within any one given year is one in 240,000. Researchers at Florida Tech have captured some amazing lightning video thanks to a new high speed camera. The footage was captured on the afternoons of May 19 and 20 by a high speed camera that took photos as storms rolled through in a window, according to Ningyu Lee, associate professor in physics and space sciences at Florida Tech. Lee guessed that the strikes were about 6 miles away from the campus. When there’s a storm just north of a window, we turn on the camera, said Lee, who works with fellow professor Dr.
Hamid Racil and graduate students Levi Bogs, Julia Tillis and Alan Bazzarth. Florida Tech says researchers were able to acquire the camera thanks to a $456,000 grant from the National Space Foundation. They used part of it to purchase the camera, which shoots at 7000 frames per second with playback speed on video of 700 FPS. Lightning has an important concept leader. Leader is a channel of ionized air that gets created below the charged clouds.
When oppositely charged leaders connect, huge current flows down the channel. In case of oceans being salty, they have charged ions and hence they are good conductors. When the lightning strikes the ocean, it spreads sideways more than downwards, hence the penetration level is lesser than the spread. Electrocution requires both sufficient current and a large enough voltage across the organism very close to the strike, so even small creatures will experience high enough voltage to be killed or injured farther away. They’ll feel it, but are unlikely to be injured.
Salt water is a decent conductor and will dissipate the lightning energy fairly easily. The danger area is probably much farther in fresh water. To actually determine the danger distances would require measurements and probably exist, but I’ve never seen them. If you’re swimming in the ocean when lightning strikes the water surface nearby you may feel an electrical shock the closer you are to the lightning attachment point the stronger will be the sensation and the stronger it’s impact on your body. When lightning strikes the ocean the electrical current from the bolt spreads radially through the water the diverging current creates a radial voltage difference called a step potential between points that are closer and those further away from the strike point.
The magnitude of these potentials decrease with radial distance from the steel distance from the strike point and if you’re far enough from the bolt you’ll not feel anything. The step potential is a direct function of the peak current in the lightning strike the radial distance from the strike point and to a lesser extent the ocean depth at the point. Negative lightning typically has a peak current of ten to 20 kilowatt amperes while positive lightning may pack five to ten times this thus positive polarity bolts may pack over ten times the step potential at a given radial distance as a negative strike and their effects travel for significantly greater radio distances a nearby bolt of either polarity can generate step potentials across the swimmer’s body that cause an electrical shock if the swimmer is distant.
Strongly shocked and days the swimmer of closer closer bolts can induce temporary paralysis ventricular fibrillation of the heart and unconsciousness and unconsciousness and death for a swimmer who is closer to the strike point. Since your body is in intimate contact with the surrounding seawater and your body has similar bulk electrical connectivity as the surrounding water any significant nearby radio lightning currents will flow through your body just about as easily as they will through the ocean water and even a non fatal shock may still cause subsequent drowning once the person becomes temporarily paralyzed or unconscious.
Unlike a person in water a person standing on dry ground near a lightning strike will often experience little, if any actual harm due to the insulating properties of the surrounding air. However, step potentials also apply to the earth around the strike point so if the person’s feet are spread apart at the time the step potential may also be sufficient to shock or even kill him. However. A person submerged in water at a similar distance to the strike would certainly experience considerable greater.
Potentially fatal effects the results clearly showed in that salty of the water the beefier the bolt discharges over dead sea water which is about 680 times saltier than Galilee water were nearly 40 times brighter flashes over the Sea of Galilee water were 1.5 times brighter than overall wet soil we will continue to do this experiment throughout the summer and we can increase the recording frame rate of the camera so I hope we’ll be able to get better videos and more interesting cases another mystery thing happened on the ocean this is the mysterious moment an anchor shaped UFO left a trail of smoke in the sky before crashing into the sea.