Severe Weather Awareness Week: Lightning safety

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Severe Weather Awareness Week in Nebraska is March 24-28th, 2025. The Storm Alert Team will cover topics each day of this week to get you geared up for severe weather season.

Today’s topic: lightning. All thunderstorms contain lightning.

It is one of the more dangerous aspects of thunderstorms, but it’s sometimes not taken as seriously.

These are good conversations to be had with family or even your sports team as the weather gets warmer, more time is spent outdoors and spring/summer ball gets going.

In the past 10 years, there has been an average of 21 deaths per year across the United States.

Lightning can strike as far as 25 miles away from a thunderstorm. If you are close enough to hear thunder, you are close enough to get struck by lightning.

As lightning passes through the air, it can heat up its surroundings to 50,000°F — five times hotter than the surface of the sun.

And the type that will threaten your life is cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning.

Places to avoid if outside include:

• “Lightning rods” like tall trees in an open area
• Flagpoles
• Open fields
• Hills
• Beaches

Instead, seek shelter in a building.

If not a building, try to get into a car; it will redirect the strike into the ground, thanks to its metal frame.

Even if inside, plan to avoid:

• Items that plug into electrical outlets
• Water
• Concrete floors or walls

Summer is the peak season for lightning.

But don’t be fooled: Strikes can happen at any time of the year.

There are a lot of other myths surrounding lightning as well:

But the best defense against a lightning strike is to plan ahead and avoid being caught where you might be vulnerable.

Ultimately, when thunder roars, it’s a good idea to head indoors.

Meteorologist Jessica Blum 
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