A reader wrote in to ask , “ Is it safe to lavish in a thunderstorm ? Were my parents mess up with me ? ”
Anahad O’Connor titled his 2007 book with a passably clear warning , Never Shower in a Thunderstorm . ordinarily , if lightning off a home or other construction , its habitant are pretty well protect . Electricity follows the path of least resistance to the ground and will travel through a good electric conductor over a defective one , given the option . Metal frame , ductwork and plumbing system all make better conductors than a human does , so the electricity from a lightning work stoppage would get convey through one of those things and then scatter into the land .
Take a shower bath or a bathtub or even set out launder a load of beauty at the kitchen sinkhole , though , and you open up the possibility that , given the selection , you might be the better conductor for electrical energy to flow through . Metal is a dependable conductor and , like we already said , electrical energy from lightning strikes can and does flow through building ’ metallic element pipes . The water flowing through these organ pipe — as skillful as your local tap urine might be — also contains impurities that help carry the current . What ’s more , your body’sresistanceto electricity iscut significantlywhen you ’re wet . If lightning strike while you ’re in contact with a pipe or faucet or water run through it , it ’s potential that the current might come up its way to you , and that wo n’t be pleasant .
potential , though not probable — your odds of being fall upon by lightning in any way in a give year are 1 in 775,000 , fit in to the National Weather Service . Still , you do n’t want to end up likeJosephine Martine , a UK woman who was “ catapulted ” from her tub and clear across the bathroom after lightning traveled through the pipage and into the shower forefront she was touching .
