Why your hair standing up in a thunderstorm is dangerous
When your hair stands up during a thunderstorm, it could mean lightning is about to strike your location. If you ever feel this sensation, take cover immediately.
When your hair stands up during a thunderstorm, it could mean lightning is about to strike your location. If you ever feel this sensation, take cover immediately.
It may look funny, but when your hair stands up during a thunderstorm, you're in danger. A newly surfaced viral video shows a girl and her friends in a parking lot on June 21, 2021. The eerie effect is caused by a powerful buildup of static electricity just before a lightning strike. Lightning strikes in the video, but fortunately doesn't reach the ground.
Milliseconds before a lightning strike, negative ions from a cloud reach down toward the Earth, causing a positive charge to reach up from multiple points on the ground, typically from metal objects or high points. These are called "positive streamers."
This illustration shows how lightning reaches out with negative ions (blue) and eventually makes contact with positive streamers (red) from the ground (NOAA)
As cameras become more common, these rarely seen moments are being captured more often, showing what happens in the seconds before a strike.
If you ever feel or see static like this, get inside a building or car immediately. The National Weather Service (NWS) says that there is no safe position that will protect you from a lightning strike if you're not sheltered.
It happened in Arizona in 2024
"We found a magnetic portal," Ale Soto posted on TikTok in February 2024, panning to her mom's hair standing up on end at Horseshoe Bend in Arizona. They pointed and seemed to draw static to their fingers, resulting in crackling heard in the video. What they didn't know then was that they had very narrowly cheated death.
A similar event was recorded in the United Kingdom in 2021
A similar event took place in the United Kingdom in 2021. Karyn Sandiford and her friends were enjoying a nice sunny day at the beach in the United Kingdom, when dark clouds gathered. Before Sandiford and her pals heard thunder, they felt a tingling sensation of static electricity on their arms and Sandiford's hair began to stand on end.
"Bit of static on the beach," Karyn Sandiford joked in the 3-second video that went viral.
A tragic photo in California 50 years ago
An infamous photo of a similar static event was taken during a thunderstorm in California in 1975 and featured a young boy who was struck by lightning shortly thereafter, while a man was killed by the lightning.
Michael McQuilken, who told the story of the picture in a 2013 blog post.
"On that infamous day, my brothers Sean and Jeff, my sister Mary and her friend Margie, and I were on our way to the top of Moro Rock, a rounded exfoliation dome and one of the favorite attractions in the park. The sky was overcast with patches of dark clouds, and there was light, intermittent rain."
After the tragedy in 1975, a sign was erected warning of dangerous lightning on Moro Rock in California. (Ted Muller)
"Shortly after we reached the top and were enjoying the view with about six other visitors, someone noticed that our hair was standing on end. At the time, we thought this was humorous ... I raised my right hand into the air and the ring I had on began to buzz so loudly that everyone could hear it."
Moments later, on the trek down the mountain, Michael's brother Sean was struck by lightning, along with several other people at various points along the mountain face; one man was killed. Michael was knocked to the ground. Sean was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for six months before recovering. The lightning continued down a metal railing and ended by causing a stone drinking fountain to explode in the parking lot.
In the moment of the strike, Michael reported feeling "timeless and weightless" and said, "Ever since the experience of what appeared to be a perception of time slowing down, where I felt like I was weightless and surrounded by white light, I have wondered how we process our sense of time. I feel that this experience helped to set up the sequence of events that led to my discipline of meditation."
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