Ologies with Alie Ward - Fulminology (LIGHTNING) with Chris Giesige

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

Thunder and lightning: very, very frighteningly interesting! Wildfire researcher and lightning scientist Chris Giesige answers questions about thunderclaps and lightning flashes in a laid back way that will put him at the top of your Fulminologist list. He explains everything from clouds to positive and negative charges, volcanic lightning, fire tornadoes, getting struck by lightning, fractal scars, sprites, elves, how many gigawatts in a lightning strike, and how to enjoy a storm without getting zapped. Also, heartbreak vs. heart damage from electricity. Follow Chris at Twitter.com/Cgiesige39 or Instagram.com/chrisgiesige A donation went to International Relief Teams: irteams.org and Westcats.com Sponsors of the show: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors For more links: alieward.com/ologies/fulminology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and uh...bikinis? Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's your mom's neighbor who dresses up that ceramic goose on her porch now in a tiny scarecrow costume for fall. Allie Ward, I'm back with another episode, a fiery one of oligies. This is one of those very, very many years in the making episodes where as soon as I decided to make this podcast oligies, I was like, I got to hit up this expert and I put him on a list. This interview, it's electric. But first, let's thank everyone in the club at patreon.com slash oligies. 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 oligies on like message boards and group texts and socially distanced barbecues. Thanks to everyone wearing oligies merch from oligiesmerch.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 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 LovedThis 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 dadward. 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. Loved this. I love that. Yes, I'm into it. It's an honor. Okay, so full monology. Let's get into it. Very much

a thing. It's a 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 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 my 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, Grammy, and also my dear sister, friend, Shannon Feltas. You have something that is called coronaphobia. It's also inexplicably named astrophobia, brontophobia, and tonitrophobia. So let's learn a little bit more about it. Okay, so I met thisologist 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 scientist and your favorite fulminologist, Chris Giseke. 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 Giseke. Pronouns he. He? Cool. 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. It's a job as an inspector with Cal Fire. So going to properties and places and making sure that people are ready to go in case a 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, I got my boots. I got my gear. Throw me on there of my N95 mask. Put me out there and let me talk to some people about some fire prevention. You're from up there. Did you grow up with 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, you know, California is kind of boring. And 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 where I started thinking, ah, you know,

that'd be kind of cool. It pays 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. And what kind of courses did you start taking? Was it meteorology or physics or what is a fire lightning scientist 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 hazardous

materials and weapons of mass destruction and all that kind of crazy stuff. So basically, it's fire chemistry, the 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 100% 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 and 3D 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 sciences stuff. So weather and climate, physics, definitely. And calculus. A lot of people don't know, but yes, you do calculus. What are you calculating 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 research in particular is more lightning. And we look more at the electrical and 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 and magnetic environment in that particular place to create lightning at a certain place in a certain time? And then we relate that mostly to a typical quote unquote 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 caused 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 here 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 fuchsia 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 going to 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? Man, there's a lot of good ones. I mean, not really here in California, per se. The last one we had recently was, you know, 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, so the Midwest or the Florida, which gets lightning like crazy, was actually at Disney World. It looked like the cloud to ground lightning strikes were hitting the bush right in front of us. Yeah, everything rumbles and it cracks. And you kind of lose stability for

a little bit. And you're it's 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? This is three years ago. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure if you were like a baby. No. No, you know, in a me, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool. We got to see. We got to see what happens. Let's see if it's going to hit that tower. Let's see if it's going to fry these people.

Were they like, Chris, did you bring this with you? It knows that you're a fire lightning wizard. 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, okay. So this is I've actually kind of written about this. So I think of, 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. And, you know, and they have this goal in life and that's to find something of the opposite charge and connect with it and do this little dance. And then they go into the great beyond afterwards, whatever that is, whatever they're doing there. So lightning is, it's a development of a certain cloud type called cumulonimus clouds. So if you heard nephology with Dr. Rachel Store, you may be familiar already with cloud anatomy. And what happens is within these clouds, the clouds form 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 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 at that point, you kind of, you start to build up like this static charge, this electrostatic charge that's in the clouds as electrons start to get stripped or transferred from 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 or 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, they want to neutralize themselves at earth and 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 going to 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 lightning. Oh, okay. So these ice particles are just having an airborne mosh pit. Some are losing electrons, some are gaining them and this tension builds and then the mosh pit 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 simmering on the ground and they have to meet each other and then boom, lightning strikes to neutralize it. And the mosh pit goes wild, they love it. And then they're like, ah. And so which is most common? 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 20 to 25% of lightning strikes. The rest are typically cloud to cloud or intra cloud. 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 to 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. So what I picture is, you know, the ones coming from the cloud to the ground, what I picture is, is after enough electrostatic charge 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 charges 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 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, step leader to streamer leader, step leader to streamer leader over. Streamer to step leader, streamer to step leader, copy that, ready to engage. All right, here we go. And they turn around and they get all the other electrons riled up. So then they throw on some heavy metal music and they start. I was just going to say, you need jock jams for this. Yeah. So they, you know, and they take off and they, 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 50 meters or so. So that's why you start to see lightning in jagged forms, because it's these, 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 veins 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 the opposite charge. But I mean, it does form a very tree like kind of like family tree like 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, Allie, but I would say no on that. A little lightning. Lightning up the butt doesn't sound too good to me. I don't know about you. Gonna keep my butt right out of it, to be honest. Have you heard about the guy who was

struck something like seven times? Yeah, that'd be the old park ranger guy. Yes. Oh, shoot. What's his name? 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 lightning 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, from the way they explained it, I mean, this guy is just unlucky as shit. The way they explain 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 zaps him in his chair. I mean, how unlucky does that happen? Do you think it's possible that he was a very negatively charged person? You know, nothing surprises me. Yeah.

Nothing surprises me. 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, screw you, 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 going to 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 livestock can be less painful and deadly than mental health struggles, just in case you needed another reason

to be compassionate to fellow humans today. But let's get back to fulminology. 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 elves and trolls, 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 L might be is the 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 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 this is proton based. And so it's 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 sprites. Have you ever seen pictures? No, no, no, I'll look it up though. Sprites, they look like jellyfish in the sky. Yeah. Or if you're, I don't know if anyone out there like is a Pokemon person, but they kind of look like tentacrules up there. That 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 background like transient red optical luminous linear mint 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's head. But scientists still don't really understand what the deal is with ball lightning. Now for a long time up until the 1990s, these were just dismissed as like hallucinations. So wow, we got a lot to learn. Future fulminologists, 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 southeast Pacific, shooting moisture like a laser gun into California. And at the same time, it's actually really hot. So what happens is you get your typical thunderstorm buildup, but the precipitation evaporates 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 buildup 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 cost fires. Big events like the one we just had where we had 11,000 lightning strikes and that caused hundreds of fires at the same time within two days. That's your potential there. 11,000 lightning strikes. I look this up. That's a real number.

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 it can reach up to 50,000 to 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh my God. Yeah, it's freaking crazy. That's so hot. How is that even possible? Yeah, I know. That's nuts. And so you've got that striking a dry hillside and it's just like a tinderbox. Yeah, absolutely. So those are one of the things that we 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 8 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 in 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 warm ocean and moisture is a pretty good precursor to lightning because it's what forms those droplets. So in those areas and 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 that'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 to play 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 up 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 of 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, the right convection and moisture and ions like that is why some areas are just more lightning prone. Yeah, it's the climate of those particular areas. Or mountain ranges are another big one, topography. So how the 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 the 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 understands and knows.

But typically, you are a little bit safer because of that. But it doesn't mean that 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 flimflam or is that real deal? No, 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. Yeah, I used to hear a lot that you count and the number of seconds you count is a number of miles away that the storm is for 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 Yeah, it's tough because a lot of people think, okay, well, it's five miles away, but lightning travels very, very far and 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 least 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 those charges on the ground start flowing through areas or a lightning decides that it doesn't want to hit that tree, you're going to get a little spark that's going to go up one leg through the heart and down the other side. Wow. Yeah, they even had the crazy a couple hundred reindeer actually think it was Canada done from from a lightning strike. Yeah, they put a ton of them dead because it had just done that. It travels up one side, goes right through the heart, travels 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 let's not. Not available for comment. PS, this lightning strike that killed over 300 reindeer was in Norway in 2016 and experts say that the lightning struck and it was the current carry through the ground and up through the hooves that killed these servids all at once. So what tends to happen to alive 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 adage is when thunder roars, head indoors, unless you want a risk being lightly toasted by the sky. I bet it smells like burned hair. 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 has to do with the breakdown of the bacteria, I believe, in the soil. And in the air, it's that chemical that you're smelling. Let's say when a storm comes passing through. Side note, if you are me and you like to huff the dirt post rain, the smell is called petrachor and it comes from bacteria that make a scent called geosmen, which I want to be my pen name. And if you're like, dang, smells so good, someone should bottle it and sell it. May I direct your attention to Etsy.com, which offers petrachor-centred oils. They have candles. People make incense. Did I just spend $8.22 for a small bottle of petrachor-centred oil that smells like,

quote, a summer storm in 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 assistance to improve the lives of those who suffer most. So you can donate and learn more about what they do at irteams.org. And we're also sending an extra donation to Chris's

research teams at westcats.com. This is a group of fire scientists aiming to be pioneers at the forefront of early detection and advanced warnings for forest fires. And Chris's work explores that. So, Cha-ching, keep doing good stuff, y'all. Now, you may hear about some sponsors who enable us to not freak out about giving away money every week. All right, questions from our loyal Patreon folks. Okay, I'm going to dive in to the lightning round, if he will. Correct. And just whatever answers strike you. Go for it. Worst the worst. Okay. So many patrons had so many questions, and I tried to group them. So, first-time question-asker H.R. Bumka, as well as Liz Rupke, Mikailee Egget, Lee, Zoe Jane,

B. Wilson, first-time question-asker Ali Rail, Kyle Evanstein, Hailey Van Der Waal, 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 Sam when it's struck by lightning. She's pulling your dick. No, really. 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? H.R. Bumka wants to know. Yeah, no. So, that is true. Okay. It's what happens is 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 ready into lightning and fire, or were you just like a braces-faced teen being like Reese Witherspoon, what a babe? Yeah, kind of. I honestly was not on the route to be as involved in lightning as I was. It was kind of like a little pseudo-malabama, all right. Yeah, Reese Witherspoon. This 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, Allie Corrin, Corey Navas, Christian Mahaney, Nathan Wilgeroth, Ruby Johnstone, M, and first-time question-asker Tamina Scholls.

Tamina 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, or the lake, or the river. And when you're inside for proper lightning safety measures, you kind of want to do the same thing. Get away from anything that's electrically circuited or water as best as you can, 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, do your best, I probably would. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who are like,

ooh, a lightning storm. I'm going to go take a shower, but it can be dangerous. You're better off just not being there in the 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 Schuyler, Alexander Brown, and Jess Wan wanted to know, is there lightning on other planets? Oh, absolutely there is. Yeah, it's not something that I've really dove into, but Jupiter gets a ton of lightning. What? Yeah, crazy. I mean, the dang things got the storm the size 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 world of meteorological chaos, but I was like, what is that big red spot called? I feel like I know it, but I can't remember it. 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 sees all kinds of cool crap, but yeah, I do know that there's lightning on other planets. There's similar processes between electrical charges. It's universal. I'm going to have to find an astrophilmonologist. There's got to be one out there.

Somebody, yeah. Oh yeah, there's got to be somebody out there. Let's see, first-time question asker Gianna McLean, Gabriel Friesen, first-time question asker Hope, all wanted to know, so in Hope's words, so when people get struck by lightning, they 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 from a very high-energy concentrated spell. I don't recommend it, 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 Lichtenberg figures, and they're caused by blood vessels exploding 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.com slash allergies this week, I will treat you to a gallery. The scars, the blisters, the intrigue. Do human beings walk around with a certain electrical charge? They can. I mean, our bodies are transporting electrons and stuff all the time, and our brains are constantly sending out and receiving electrical signals.

Okay, if you've ever touched something and gotten like a little 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 have actually been shown to create antimatter, which is pretty freaking cool. So yeah, these charges produce really high, 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 think 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 are so much energy, they knock the neutrons out of nitrogen and that unstable nitrogen and 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 you just walking around on the street and all of a sudden an anti-ally comes up and you guys bump into each other and then you're just gone and you annihilate each other. Is that possible to look at how that happens with lightning and like figure out how to do that on earth? I don't know. Superman had some trouble with Bizarro Superman, so I'm not sure. But yeah, no, that's something that's really cool. These researchers in Japan,

but actually the ones who's like, yeah, creates antimatter, freaking positrons. Oh my god, that's amazing. And a bunch of listeners had a really good question. Stephen Clark, Sid, Gopkajar, Adam Weaver, Haley Vandewal, Katie Coast, Nicole Blackery, Ross Owen-Qualls, and Hugh Plummer all wanted to know, is capturing lightning a viable energy source? Oh man, this is crazy, right? Okay, so the thing is that lightning produces so much electric, there's so much energy there. You're talking somewhere between like 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 steelness because we're working on it, is you take something and right as the lighting starts 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 really very attractive. Maybe it looks like a tree. And and so when lightning strikes it, what 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 and disseminate 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 volts going to people's homes. Right. That's about a million times more more voltage than than you then comes out of your little electric socket there. So is it possible? Man, it's it's really tough. I know Tesla, the old Nikola Tesla, that guy, he 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. 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 the pigeon, which I know that there was so much more to his story. But is that what you got out of his whole career? I know I'm the worst. What was the pigeon's name? 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 pigeon is never going to love you. OK, 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 required that changes everything. Although it did make a final visit to him in his hotel room in 1922. And by his account, her eyes shown 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, can a bolt of lightning actually produce 1.1 gigawatts of power?

Oh my gosh. That's great. I'm assuming he's referring to the old back to the future. Yep. Yep. Old Doc Brown. Yeah, I love that. Not sure if it's that much or not. Yeah. I think give me a second here. Yeah, are you going to do some back of the envelope calculations? Yeah. Calculus is happening. Yeah, they could produce 1.21 gigawatts. Really? Yeah. Nice. I can't believe we actually got to ask a lightning scientist. I mean, there's obviously a range of gigawatts that lightning 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 gigawatts and not gigawatts, please blame Back to the Future writers, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, who thought gigawatts were pronounced gigawatts. And so they spelled it with a J in their script, and they shot the whole movie. And then afterward, they're like, oh, it's gigawatts. People didn't have Google. Also, pronouncing it with the J sound like gigawatts 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 use 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 Jif, who says it's pronounced Jif. And don't at me. I'm your internet dad. How dare you? Okay. A few patrons wanted to know about flaming spinnies, 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 vortexes of terror. No. So we're going to break it down a little bit here. And a true fire tornado has a very specific definition. Of course, the media loves the

term fired tornado or firenado because it sounds a lot more badass in fire world. Honestly, I mean, come on. The only thing more badass than a fired 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 are fire worlds. There are also fired devils, which are the equivalent of a dust devil, just a fire. But most of what you see out there in 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. So we love to call things vortex.

Yeah. So a true fired 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 fired 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 cumulus formation in the sky or a thunder head or a pyro-cumulus. 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 happened on a country porch, a swing with your favorite lightning buddy. This is just ambience.

A cloud up above. And that has to have some sort of rotation as well. Most of the quote-unquote, what people call fired 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. So if we're going by the true definition of a fired tornado, in other words, a tornado as defined as rotating, violently rotating, called with 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 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 15,

2020, near Hallelujah Junction in California by the Nevada border, northwest of Reno. And Tasha Farrell, aka that one girl Tasha on Twitter, captured video of the dry golden chaperone of the Sierras with this raging brush fire and a column of spiraling smoke in the middle. Reaction all over the world. Was it really unifying? What the fuck, 2020? 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 fire worlds are extremely difficult to predict. So that was kind of a stepping stone in the cool science of fire behavior and fire tornadoes.

It was the fact that the National Weather Service was actually able to issue a tornado warning for that particular event, which was really cool. That kind of dovetails into a first time question asker Val Lucas wanted to know, how do the lightning tracker maps update so fast, like the flash out the window and then the dot popping up on the map or 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 you used to not be able to get lightning updates for every so many minutes or so or hours and now a lightning map will update every 15 seconds. How do they do that? To see 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. Yeah, like pretty much instantaneously almost. So then it just gets sent back down 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. Katie Coast, who does a lot of transcription for us and 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. He 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. Yeah. I never really sat there and 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. Are you glad that 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 few people ask Emily A wants to know, is it true that thunder is a 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, it'd be perception, right? Some might find it scary. I would find it extremely fascinating and joyous, somewhat of an adrenaline rush 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 of where lightning strike has just gone down and produces a shock wave. And that shock wave becomes a sound wave. And so that's what we hear as thunder. It can be really scary because

the ground is shaking, the air is 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 hide in a corner under the bed or something like that and just wait for it to get over. So yeah, I guess it could be scary. 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, thunder shirts or pressure garments for pups and people alike. Who knew that consistent gentle pressure like a hug releases anxiety-soothing hormones? Well, scientists and also people, but not makers of girdles. You just went too far with those. Real it in a little. A bunch of people. Sam Healy, first-time question asker, JJ Pierce, Chris Moore, first-time question asker, Rachel Dashiell, and Asia Yeager 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 14, 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 lightning strikes are coming or as the 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 or a lightning event. And you can see that the EM meter fluctuates a lot.

I mean, we'll hit high note at the time that a storm is overhead. So if there's a storm approaching, especially if there's that much buildup of an electrical charge, the static in the atmosphere, yeah, your hairs are going to rise right on up just like the old rubber 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, unless those are just your spidey senses tingling a little bit, I'd probably 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 lightning strikes come down. Now, some people would want to go out in a lightning storm on purpose and

Chiang Nguyen wants to know how true is the Ben Franklin story? The key, the kite, is it all bullshit? No, this actually happened. 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 ever is from one of those. Okay, quick aside, Chris sent this Ben Franklin passage to me later and it was written around April 1749 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 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 buildup 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 throws something up there, something that he knows is going to attract the electrical charges that are in the sky. Kite is a perfect thing for that. And lo and behold, he shows, hey, there is electricity out 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 Renee's Woodworking and Marty Goodwin and Mae. Mae is a first time question asker and so are Renee and David. I'll read Mae's question. OMG exclamation exclamation point. So my partner and my brother and I were all struck by lightning at the same time while fishing, I know, all unharmed. I know, I'm wondering about what things people who survive 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 believe there's that many listeners that know or have experience with this. I haven't met anybody yet who's actually been struck. Holy crap. I mean, right? Oh my gosh. I mean, the people who were 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 a field or 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 were multiple people in an area during a same event that all got struck isn't too surprising. Why it's happening to some people's family members more. 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 a goblin. I don't know. I'll look into it. Okay, you were in no way cursed 100% JK JK JK. You were exciting and special because you just impressed a professional fulminologist, which I imagine is hard to do. Also, I looked for any scientific evidence that getting struck by lightning could possibly run in families or 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 Quora 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 is nonsense. A myth. Baldur dash at 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 arranging. Okay, a few people,

Madeline Lewis and Mark Chavez, Madeline Lewis, first 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 and charges being pumped into them to create pyrocumulonimbus clouds. And so the ones that produce lightning. So what you have is during a fire especially, is fires 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 pyroconvection, 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 cumulus 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 100 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 pyrocumulonimbus 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. 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 and 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 hella, hella sick, bro. The most Northern California sentence you could say. 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 yeti 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

Joravavia. 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. Yeah, we know climate is going to come into it. So yeah, I'm not quite sure exactly what the global statistics are. In the US, I know roughly 80 to 90% of fires are caused by humans and then the other percent caused by lightning. So 10 to 20%. 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, 100 lightning caused fires within a 24 hour period. But overall, human caused fires are kind of the big one. Yeah. And we actually don't mind lightning caused fires unless they're during events such as 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 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, let 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, 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 extremes in heat during summer times in certain states of the western

US and more heat is not a good scenario for fire because it 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, haven't recognized before. I mean, some places during these fire events, you'll see gusts of wind up to like 80 miles per hour. And you're just like, holy shit, how do you even do something with that? Yeah. 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 rain during winter seasons and then fuel

and vegetation grows and 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 of you guys out there saw the Arctic Circle reaching above 100 degrees this year, you know, and we're starting to see more and more fires burning out there. And so yeah, there's just, 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, 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 or 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 is you can throw all the money at it you want. 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 of climate change, global warming, makes it even tougher. And so when it comes to voting, think about which representatives might give more of a darn about it. Yeah, it's always tough. But if you're looking at

something as big as climate change, yeah, find the people who are going after it and you know, try and get out there and vote so maybe they can help do something. And you know, the fire industry has been undergoing a really big culture shift in the past so many years. And that's because of probably a lot of you 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. Yep, it's definitely become a problem, especially here in California, we have some serious land management issues. And a lot of these reasons that we might get some of these mega fires or big fires is because they're such a buildup 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 extreme 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 a 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 cultural burns, which burn rangeland and forested areas 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 buildup 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 had 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 learned from the way that they manage the forest and manage their lands in order to do a restorative practices.

What if we just raked the forest like they do in Europe? Can't you just rake the forest, sweep up the forest? Gotta take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest, very important. Yeah, you know, you could try, it can take a while. Yeah, oh my god. You know, whatever will. Like you're just gonna rake them. Raking the forest, super simple, kind of just like Marie condoing the linen closet. Clean it up. Shame on California for not sweeping the 33 million acres of thick vegetation on forested lands. P.S., the U.S. is 56% woods according to the 2016 forest inventory and analysis program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service,

so grab those brooms and garbage bags, it's our fault. Actually, it kind of is. Since North American colonization and the genocide 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 KCET has a series called Tending the Wild that 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, Brooke wants to know what kind of superpowers will I get

when I am struck by lightning? What are we looking at? I don't condone it. I would say you're most likely not going to get them. Of course, we see this in movies and stuff all the time. It hasn't stopped me from going out during lightning storms. Trying to get it. But I mean, the flash, lightning, yeah, really fast, extremely on 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 imagine. So the scenarios that they paint in those movies, are they realistic?

No. But my favorite description of lightning is actually from the movie Frankenweenie. I don't know if you ever saw that. It's a Disney movie, Frankenweenie. I'm familiar. It's towards 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 2012 stop motion supernatural horror comedy film about a corp's dog. Lightning is simply electricity. The cloud is angry. Yes, making strong. All the electrons are saying I am leaving you. I go to the land of opportunity. The ground says, yes, we need electrons trained in science just like you. Come, come, welcome.

So both sides start to build a ladder. And the kids are just frightened to death of this because of the way he's explaining it. But I really love the way that he describes it and 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 Frankenweenie. Frankenweenie. Oh, I'm putting it in. He does not see the invisible ladders when the two ladders meet. Boom. The circuit is complete. Oh, my God. Last listener question, John Worcester, Ira Gray, Hannah Quist, McKaylee Egget, and first type question asker Tiffany Rosales, 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. What about lightning rods, right? Pends on how small of a 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. 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 at the end. What sucks the most about lightning? What do you hate the most about your job? What just what's like that? It would probably be trying to trying to get people to 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 and knowing that there are so many 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 and get out there and look at fire tornadoes and fire worlds, 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 get to go out there during some of these storm events and just fucking blow right through them and just get inundated with the rain and how these storms come. 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 and that field work that's extremely, extremely exciting. 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 1.1 gigawatts? 1.1, yeah, how many, whatever, 0.21, 1.21, sorry, gigawatts, 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 rad. I know, right? Yeah, it's super rad. I mean, you're my favorite fulminologist. You are the only fulminologist I know, but you are my favorite legitimately. Well, thank you, I appreciate that. So ask smart people stupid questions because it

might spark some great ideas. Also, someone just throw a dump 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 CGeeCeeGee39 or Instagram at ChrisGeeCeeGee 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 alleyward with 1L on everything. And more notes are at alleyward.com slash ologies slash fulminology. That link is also in the show notes as is a link to ologiesmerch.com, which sells t-shirts for 20 bucks. We keep them affordable because I just really love to see y'all

wearing them in the wild, making new ologies friends. You can tag photos with ologiesmerch 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 Talber for admitting the Facebook group of over 15,000 peaceful, kind, smart people and hello ologies redditors too. Thank you to everyone on patreon.com slash ologies for literally funding the show and submitting such good questions. Thank you to Emily White and the group of transcribers for getting all these episodes transcribed for our deaf and hard of hearing pals. Those are up for free for anyone who wants transcripts at alleyward.com slash ologies slash extras. Alongside a bunch of bleeped episodes,

you can download if you have kiddos or classes to teach. Thank you to Caleb Patton for bleeping and thank you to Noel Dilworth for helping me schedule interviews. Thank you to assistant editor, Jared Sleeper, who cuts out all my ums, but not my swears. And of course to the pod of thunder, Steven Raythoris, who also hosts the podcast about kitties and Seed Jurassic Wright, which is about dinosaurs to find programs. Nick Thorburn 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 is that 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 bolts 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 bangs, 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. Bye bye. Zoology. Ryan started the fire!