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Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's your mom's neighbor who dresses up that
Speaker 4: ceramic goose on our porch? Now in a tiny scarecrow
Speaker 4: costume for fall Ali Ward. I'm back with another episode
Speaker 4: five every one of Ologies. This is one of those
Speaker 4: very very many years in the making episodes where as
Speaker 4: soon as I decided to make this podcast Ology, so
Speaker 4: I was like, I got a hit up this expert
Speaker 4: and I put them on a list. This interview it's electric.
Speaker 4: But first let's thank everyone in the club at patreon
Speaker 4: dot com slash ologies. You're like fam. You submit questions
Speaker 4: and you find out what episodes are coming up. I
Speaker 4: love you. Thanks to everyone who's recommended ologies on like
Speaker 4: message boards and group texts and socially distanced barbecues. Thanks
Speaker 4: to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thank
Speaker 4: you to the folks who press subscribe and who rate it.
Speaker 4: We're like number three on the science charts. It's bananas.
Speaker 4: Especially thank you to the folks who leave reviews for
Speaker 4: me to read on days when I feel like a dirty,
Speaker 4: nervous prairie dog, which is often sometimes, I read them
Speaker 4: all and so here's a fresh one to prove it.
Speaker 4: This is from love this who said you think scientists
Speaker 4: would be very serious people who get straight to the point,
Speaker 4: but nope, So fun to listen to I learned so much.
Speaker 4: Thanks dad, word. I hope you know that that's your
Speaker 4: name now and that will be put on your headstone.
Speaker 4: I hope you like it. Signed, love this, Love this,
Speaker 4: I love that. Yes, I'm into it. It's an honor. Okay. So, folmonology,
Speaker 4: let's get into it. Very much a thing. It's the
Speaker 4: science of those streaks in the sky, and it comes
Speaker 4: from the Latin word fulgare, which means to shine or
Speaker 4: to flash. And by the way, I'd learned this one
Speaker 4: minute ago that fulminate also means to publish a thundering denunciation.
Speaker 4: So if you're feeling pretty charged up by current events,
Speaker 4: fulminate to your heart's content by sweet smart babies kaboom. Okay. So, also,
Speaker 4: if you have a fear of thunder and lightning, you're
Speaker 4: not alone. I'm looking straight at you, my dog Remy,
Speaker 4: and also my dear sister friend Shannon feltis you have
Speaker 4: something that is called kronophobia. It's also inexplicably named astrophobia, brontophobia,
Speaker 4: and tonatrophobia. So let's learn a little bit more about it. Okay.
Speaker 4: So I met this ologist probably five years ago. We
Speaker 4: were both on the bill for a nerd night in
Speaker 4: LA and he just dazzled this whiskey drunk crowd with
Speaker 4: wildfire and thunderstorm facts. And he studied fire science in
Speaker 4: northern California and for the past decade has been a
Speaker 4: researcher with the Westcats Group, reviewing satellite imagery and monitoring
Speaker 4: weather patterns and really mapping the topography of the Western
Speaker 4: United States to figure out how geology and mountains interact
Speaker 4: with weather systems to better predict where lightning might strike.
Speaker 4: So he is such a Californian. I love it. He's
Speaker 4: laid back, he's cool, affable, committed to protecting the land
Speaker 4: we love out here. So kick your boots up, lean
Speaker 4: back on your porch chair, and open a beer or
Speaker 4: an organic superfoods kombucha, and enjoy some facts about thunder
Speaker 4: and lightning and thor and storms and pigeons and volcanoes
Speaker 4: and scars and chigawatts and sprites and elves and flaming
Speaker 4: tornadoes and of course wildfires with lightning scientists and your
Speaker 4: favorite folmonologist Chris Gizigi. When all of this news of
Speaker 4: all of these like dry lightning and dry storms and
Speaker 4: blazing hollow trees was coming out the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 4: I was like, I have so many questions.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 4: My first question, though, I always have to ask, is
Speaker 4: can you say your first and last name and what
Speaker 4: your pronouns are?
Speaker 6: My name is Chris Gisigi. Pronouns he okay.
Speaker 4: Also, Chris is about to start a new and very
Speaker 4: exciting job, but because we're so deep in infernos out here,
Speaker 4: his start time has to wait until after fire season.
Speaker 6: Ironically, that's a a job as an inspector with CalFire,
Speaker 6: so going to properties and places and making sure that
Speaker 6: people are ready to go in case of wildfire. Not if,
Speaker 6: but when a wildfire comes through up in the Napa
Speaker 6: County area.
Speaker 4: When is fire season even over in California?
Speaker 5: You know, it all depends this year.
Speaker 6: I mean it's it's looking like it's going to be
Speaker 6: high and dry until at least October November. I'm ready
Speaker 6: to go. I mean, shot man, I got my boots,
Speaker 6: I got my gear. Throw me on there, my n
Speaker 6: ninety five masks. Put me out there and let me
Speaker 6: talk to some people about some fire prevention.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you're from up there. Did you grow
Speaker 4: up with fires and lightning really on your radar on
Speaker 4: your Doppler since you were a kid or where did
Speaker 4: you start getting into this.
Speaker 6: Well, it's you know, it's funny because California in general,
Speaker 6: a lot of people think, oh, yeah, California's kind of boring.
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe they got some earthquakes here and there too.
Speaker 6: So growing up in Sonoma County, I really don't remember
Speaker 6: a lot of fire activity. We don't really get too
Speaker 6: much thunder and lightning.
Speaker 5: It was one of those things where we're just like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, at the time, being a firefighter would be cool.
Speaker 5: Maybe I'll be able to do that, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of macho and you know, let's get out there. Yeah, bro, firefighting.
Speaker 6: It really wasn't until maybe later years of high school
Speaker 6: or I started thinking, ah, you know, that'd be kind
Speaker 6: of cool.
Speaker 5: It pay as well. At the time, benefits are really good.
Speaker 5: You know, it's all about the future.
Speaker 6: Find something that you can you can get all those
Speaker 6: good perks with. And then you go to college and
Speaker 6: I'm like, wow, actually the science of this stuff is
Speaker 6: a lot more fascinating to me.
Speaker 4: Ah. And what kind of courses did you start taking?
Speaker 4: Was it meteorology or physics or what is it? Fire? Lightning?
Speaker 4: Scientists study.
Speaker 5: So at first it's just straight fire science.
Speaker 6: So you're looking at fire chemistry, you're looking at fire behavior,
Speaker 6: you're looking at fire prevention systems. And it's both kind
Speaker 6: of wildland and structure fire or residential fire, so you
Speaker 6: can you kind of pick up both. At least the
Speaker 6: program I was in, it was even things like hazard's
Speaker 6: materials and weapons of mass destruction and all that kind
Speaker 6: of crazy stuff. So basically it's fire chemistry, a history
Speaker 6: of fires, fire behavior, fire prevention systems, things like hazardous materials.
Speaker 4: He says that once you get further into college and
Speaker 4: you jump through those flaming hoops, you can specialize in
Speaker 4: how meteorology affects fire and climate, or you can study GIS,
Speaker 4: which I one hundred percent had to look up and
Speaker 4: found that it means geographic information systems aka maps. Well,
Speaker 4: it's technically a framework for gathering, managing, and analyzing data
Speaker 4: rooted in the science of geography and analyzing spatial location
Speaker 4: and layers of information into visualizations using map in three
Speaker 4: D scenes, which means just really bitching as hell maps.
Speaker 6: You could even just continue into some sort of fire management,
Speaker 6: and so a lot of my coursework is strictly related
Speaker 6: to fire, and then a lot of life science is stuff,
Speaker 6: so weather in climate physics definitely, and calculus.
Speaker 5: M h. A lot of people don't know, but yes
Speaker 5: you do calculus.
Speaker 4: What are you calculusing as a fire scientist?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so many computers and different models that kind of
Speaker 6: help us with this. So there really isn't that much
Speaker 6: calculus when you're doing just in the field stuff. But
Speaker 6: in terms of meteorology and fire weather, calculus is a
Speaker 6: lot of its integrals and derivatives. It's all rates of change.
Speaker 4: And so how much of your work deals with fire
Speaker 4: science and how much deals with lightning or is it
Speaker 4: kind of an equal amount.
Speaker 5: It's kind of an equal amount.
Speaker 6: My re search in particular is more lightning and we
Speaker 6: look more at the electrical magnetic properties of it. Let's
Speaker 6: say we're trying to figure out a way to build
Speaker 6: more confidence in our.
Speaker 5: Lightning models for prediction or projections.
Speaker 6: So we kind of look at all, right, what are
Speaker 6: the different atmospheric elements and conditions that are happening, and
Speaker 6: how is that interacting with the Earth creating some sort
Speaker 6: of electrical magnetic environment in that particular place to create
Speaker 6: lightning at a certain place at a certain.
Speaker 5: Time, and then we relate that mostly to.
Speaker 6: A typical quote unquote when would be fire season, which
Speaker 6: is usually your late spring or summer months through fall.
Speaker 6: We come up with some sort of projection system to say,
Speaker 6: all right, these areas have high risk of lightning, and
Speaker 6: because during these months, when these certain conditions are met,
Speaker 6: lightning cause fires could be issues here.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, this is a huge issue. And as someone
Speaker 4: who lives on the West Coast, the last few weeks
Speaker 4: our lives out eat have just been spent indoors, not
Speaker 4: only because of Corona, but because the air is so
Speaker 4: thick with smoke you can barely see a few hundred
Speaker 4: feet in front of you. I myself have had horrible headaches,
Speaker 4: a few migraines, throat hurts, the whites of my eyes
Speaker 4: are kind of a soft fuchia color. And wildfires in
Speaker 4: Oregon have claimed the lives of dozens of people and counting.
Speaker 4: So this is a really big topic. But we're gonna
Speaker 4: put a pin in it for a second and get
Speaker 4: to the basics of lightning. What does it look like,
Speaker 4: how does it work? And is the sky mad? Bro
Speaker 4: and do you have a lightning storm in your mind
Speaker 4: that when you think back, is like the most fireworks
Speaker 4: one that you've ever experienced. What's the craziest lightning storm
Speaker 4: you've ever seen?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 6: It man, there's a lot of good ones. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean not really here in California, per Sae. The last
Speaker 6: one we had recently was you know, it was damaging
Speaker 6: and everything, but from my perspective, it was kind of fun.
Speaker 6: But most of the major lightning storms that have been
Speaker 6: through either Florida or Ohio, the Midwest or the Florida
Speaker 6: which gets lightning like crazy. It was actually at Disney World.
Speaker 6: It looked like the cloud to ground lightning strikes were
Speaker 6: hitting the bush right in front of us. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: everything rumbles in the cracks and you kind of loose
Speaker 6: stability for a little bit, and you're so loud and
Speaker 6: it's so bright, to the point where like my mom
Speaker 6: and my sister were actually covering their ears and be like,
Speaker 6: we don't want.
Speaker 4: To be here, we need to leave. How old were you?
Speaker 5: Uh this is three years ago?
Speaker 4: Okay, like a baby?
Speaker 6: No, no, And of me, I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 6: this is so cool. We got to see We're got
Speaker 6: to see what happens. Let's say if it's going to
Speaker 6: hit that tower. Let's see if it's gonna fry these
Speaker 6: people or.
Speaker 4: Were they like, Chris, did you bring this with you?
Speaker 4: It knows that you're a fire lightning wizard.
Speaker 5: The fire lighting.
Speaker 4: It's going on your business card. Okay, so this but
Speaker 4: seeing it that up close, I've never seen it that
Speaker 4: up close. But okay, what is the difference between lightning
Speaker 4: striking the clouds to the ground versus the ground to
Speaker 4: the clouds, Like, what exactly is lightning? Where is it going?
Speaker 5: Oh? So the story of lightning?
Speaker 6: Oh yes, okay, so this is I've actually kind of
Speaker 6: written about this, so I have. Yeah, Well, to kind
Speaker 6: of set a tone here, The way I think of
Speaker 6: the process of lightning happening is I think about all
Speaker 6: these little molecules and particles that are happening within the
Speaker 6: cloud and happening within the atmosphere and are you know,
Speaker 6: flowing in the earth.
Speaker 5: And I always like to think of them as an.
Speaker 6: Emoji or as little emojis running around with different smiley
Speaker 6: faces or positive charge and negative charge m and you know,
Speaker 6: and they have this goal in life, and that's to
Speaker 6: find find something of the opposite charge and connect with
Speaker 6: it and do this little dance and then they go
Speaker 6: into the great beyond afterwards wherever.
Speaker 5: That is, whatever they're doing, whatever they're doing there. So
Speaker 5: lightning is it's a development of a certain cloud type
Speaker 5: called cumulatimus clouds.
Speaker 4: So if you heard Nuphology with doctor Rachel Store, you
Speaker 4: may be familiar already with cloud anatomy.
Speaker 6: And what happens is within these clouds. The clouds formed
Speaker 6: because we typically have updrafts of air. Warm air rises,
Speaker 6: so we get updrafts, and as it rises, it runs
Speaker 6: into the altitude, so you get higher up and higher
Speaker 6: up it gets a little colder, and so as that
Speaker 6: air rises, it kind of cools and condenses and a
Speaker 6: little droplets form around particulates, little ice crystals can form,
Speaker 6: and they're banging around in there, having a good old time,
Speaker 6: hitting each other, bumping, doing whatever, and and at that
Speaker 6: point you kind of you start to build up like
Speaker 6: this static charge. It's electrostatic charge. It's in the clouds
Speaker 6: as electrons start to get stripped or transferred for one
Speaker 6: to the other. And so during this process, eventually what
Speaker 6: happens is these clouds when they're starting to get ready,
Speaker 6: when they're priming themselves for a lightning event, they separate themselves.
Speaker 6: So the negative charges go down towards the bottom of
Speaker 6: the cloud and the positive charges go towards the middle
Speaker 6: of the top of the cloud. And this is because
Speaker 6: what weather is, it's a neutralization process. So we're trying
Speaker 6: to get these electrons that are up in the cloud
Speaker 6: down to Earth and want to neutralize themselves at Earth,
Speaker 6: bring them back to where they belong, so they separate
Speaker 6: themselves up there, and then at the same time they're
Speaker 6: separating themselves in other clouds, or they're separating themselves at
Speaker 6: the ground.
Speaker 5: So on the ground level you might have.
Speaker 6: The electrons will actually get pushed down further to further
Speaker 6: lowers of the ground, which leaves nothing but a positive
Speaker 6: charge stuck at the surface. This is just opposites attract
Speaker 6: like charges repel each other. So the electrons in the
Speaker 6: cloud are going to help push those down, those electrons
Speaker 6: in the ground down even further into the ground, and
Speaker 6: that leaves a nice positive charge on the surface. So
Speaker 6: what happens then is once everything gets kind of built up,
Speaker 6: then those charges are going to look to connect somewhere,
Speaker 6: and so sometimes they're gonna interconnect within the cloud. Sometimes
Speaker 6: they're going to connect between one cloud and another, which
Speaker 6: is cloud to cloud, or sometimes they're going to try
Speaker 6: and connect with the charges that are on the ground,
Speaker 6: and that would be cloud to ground lighting.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, So these ice particles are just having an
Speaker 4: airborne mashpit. Some are losing electrons, some are gaining them,
Speaker 4: and this tension builds and then the moshpit divides with
Speaker 4: the negative charges heading to the bottom. Now, as for
Speaker 4: cloud to ground lightning, electrons on the Earth's surface get
Speaker 4: pushed further into the ground. So positive charges are kind
Speaker 4: of simmering on the ground and they have to meet
Speaker 4: each other and then boom, lightning strikes to neutralize it,
Speaker 4: and the mash pit goes wild. They love it. And
Speaker 4: then they're like, and so, which is most common?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 5: Cloud to ground lightning is actually the least common.
Speaker 6: It's the one we see and the one we relate
Speaker 6: to the most, but it only makes up like twenty
Speaker 6: to twenty five percent of lightning strikes.
Speaker 5: The rest are typically cloud to cloud or intracloud.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah, crazy right, yeah yeah yeah. And so
Speaker 4: they're up there kind of banging around and discharging that
Speaker 4: electricity from cloud to cloud a lot of the times.
Speaker 4: But we notice the ones that are ground cloud because
Speaker 4: they're kind of closer to us.
Speaker 6: Well, they look cooler, they're more streaky. They're the ones
Speaker 6: that we see when the flash comes down, and yeah,
Speaker 6: it's like an adrenaline rush for them.
Speaker 5: Really. Yeah.
Speaker 6: What I picture is, you know, the ones coming from
Speaker 6: the cloud to the ground. What I picture is is,
Speaker 6: after enough electrostatic charges is built up in the clouds,
Speaker 6: they're not ready to go.
Speaker 5: And you have something called step leaders and.
Speaker 6: Streamers, and these are kind of the leading molecule, the
Speaker 6: leading chargers that are getting out there and ready to go.
Speaker 4: So these are step leaders that reach down toward the
Speaker 4: ground and streamers down below that reach up.
Speaker 6: And so I picture these these little charges strapping on
Speaker 6: a helmet, putting on their goggles, and the step leaders
Speaker 6: are up in the cloud and they're shouting out at
Speaker 6: the streamers down in the ground.
Speaker 9: You know, uh, step leader to streamer leader, step leader
Speaker 9: to streamer leader, over streamer, two step leader, streamer, two
Speaker 9: step leader, coffee docage.
Speaker 7: All right, there we go.
Speaker 5: And they turn around and they get all the other
Speaker 5: electrons riled up. Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 6: So then they throw on some heavy metal music and
Speaker 6: start they're just.
Speaker 4: Gonna say you needams for this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So they you know, and they take off and
Speaker 6: the step leaders kind of the initiator of these lightning strikes,
Speaker 6: and so they take off towards the ground, and they
Speaker 6: have no idea where they're going. They have no idea
Speaker 6: where these other charges are on the ground because there's
Speaker 6: such a distance between them. They can only really communicate
Speaker 6: about fifty meters or so.
Speaker 5: So that's why you start to see lightning in jagged forms.
Speaker 6: Because it's these electrons trying to reach the ground that
Speaker 6: are trying to find the opposite charge but really can't.
Speaker 6: So they shoot out in intervals and they take this
Speaker 6: jagged path until eventually they connect with it and then
Speaker 6: they meet together and the streamers, so the charges on
Speaker 6: the ground will actually reach up sometime and try and
Speaker 6: meet them at a certain point.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And is it fractals at all? Or am I
Speaker 4: making that up? Does it go like two veins split
Speaker 4: into four veines split into Is there anything like mathematic
Speaker 4: or pattern wise about lightning strikes or is it pretty random?
Speaker 6: It's just kind of whatever path they can find for
Speaker 6: least resistance. And however they can try and find themselves.
Speaker 5: To the opposite charge.
Speaker 8: Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: But I mean it does form a very treelike kind
Speaker 6: of like family treelike structure, or veins of a river
Speaker 6: or stream. Yeah, something like that, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 4: You've never been struck by lightning?
Speaker 7: Have you?
Speaker 5: I have not. Okay, I do not plan on it.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I don't know about you, Ali, but
Speaker 5: that a little lightning, uh pat, lighting up the butt
Speaker 5: doesn't sound too good. And I don't know about you.
Speaker 4: Gonna gonna keep my butt right out of it, to
Speaker 4: be honest. Have you heard about the guy who was
Speaker 4: struck something like seven times?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that'd be the old park ranger guy. Uh shoot,
Speaker 6: what's his name's Roy Sullivan?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Nice?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Have you ever looked him up?
Speaker 4: I have, and I've read his story, and I mean,
Speaker 4: what do you think was happening with him?
Speaker 5: Oh? My god?
Speaker 6: I mean, this poor guy, so several of the instances,
Speaker 6: I mean, he gets struck, he's driving away from a
Speaker 6: storm and gets nailed by lighting inside of his car.
Speaker 6: I think something like that happened twice.
Speaker 4: Yep, it's true. And apparently whenever he was caught in
Speaker 4: a storm, he would pull over and lie down in
Speaker 4: the front seat of the truck to hide from the lightning.
Speaker 4: And he also started to carry around a can of
Speaker 4: water in case he got struck again and his hair
Speaker 4: caught on fire, and spoiler, he had to use that
Speaker 4: can more than once.
Speaker 6: He's out working in the field, gets struck a third time.
Speaker 6: He even one time was inside of his house, just
Speaker 6: sitting there in his chair.
Speaker 5: And from the way they.
Speaker 6: Explained it, I mean, this guy is just unlucky as shit.
Speaker 6: The way they explained it, the lightning bolt finds its
Speaker 6: way through the electrical system into his house, ricochets off
Speaker 6: of this sort of like a metal container or something,
Speaker 6: and then zap him in his chair.
Speaker 5: Wow, I mean, how unlucky does that for that to happen.
Speaker 4: Do you think it's possible that he was a very
Speaker 4: negatively charged person, You.
Speaker 5: Know, nothing surprises me. Yeah, it could be. It could
Speaker 5: be circumstances, wrong place, wrong time. It could be I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 6: Maybe he upset Zeus in some way, and Zeus is
Speaker 6: just like scream Man.
Speaker 4: Maybe he needed an exorcism. Ps. Poor Roy Sullivan started
Speaker 4: to think that maybe there was a force out to
Speaker 4: get him, and he started to fear death, which would
Speaker 4: have happened to me after the first strike, Let's be honest,
Speaker 4: but like around strike four, he was like, oh shit,
Speaker 4: am I gonna die? But Roy didn't die from a
Speaker 4: lightning strike, sadly, he passed away from a self inflicted
Speaker 4: gunshot wound. Proof that even a powerful shock from the
Speaker 4: sky that could kill a herd of lives can be
Speaker 4: less painful and deadly than mental health struggles. Just in
Speaker 4: case you needed another reason to be compassionate to follow
Speaker 4: humans today. But let's get back to bullminology. Talk to
Speaker 4: me a little bit about the different forms, because from
Speaker 4: what I understand, there's heat and ball and sprites and
Speaker 4: dry lightning. I don't know what any of those are.
Speaker 4: I just know the words.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so sprites. Well, first of all, there's several things,
Speaker 5: so sprites and elves, and.
Speaker 6: There's other type of mythical creature names that come to it, trolls.
Speaker 6: What these are, so sprites and all controls. What these
Speaker 6: are is electromagnetic discharges. So you have a lightning event
Speaker 6: and you're having a discharge of electricity and you just
Speaker 6: create electromagnetic pulses. And so what a sprite or an
Speaker 6: ell might be is lightning itself actually discharges these electromagnetic
Speaker 6: discharges up above it, so into the next layer of
Speaker 6: the atmosphere. So they happen above lightning events, and typically
Speaker 6: it's from positive lightning, so positive lighting. You have positive
Speaker 6: lightning and negative lightning, and it's the type of attraction
Speaker 6: that there is, so negative lightning is a lot more common.
Speaker 6: It's when the negative charges connect with the positive charges
Speaker 6: on the ground. And then positive lightning is a lot
Speaker 6: less common, but it's a lot more powerful. And that's
Speaker 6: when there's positive charges in the cloud connect with the.
Speaker 5: Negative charges on the ground. Okay, And this just has
Speaker 5: to do with one.
Speaker 6: Is the positive lightning usually proton based and so a
Speaker 6: lot more dense than electrons, so they can pull up
Speaker 6: more electrons and by doing that you create more energy.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And so it's typically after these really intense, high
Speaker 6: energy positive lightning strikes that you will get things like
Speaker 6: sprites or elves and kind you know sprites.
Speaker 5: Have you ever seen pictures?
Speaker 4: No? No, no, I'll look it up though.
Speaker 6: Sprites they look like jellyfish in the sky or yeah,
Speaker 6: or if you're I don't know, if anyone out there
Speaker 6: likes as a Pokemon person, but they kind of look
Speaker 6: like tenta cruls up there giant pokemon to me at
Speaker 6: least that's what I see.
Speaker 4: So, yes, they're called sprites and elves and gnomes and pixies,
Speaker 4: and their upper atmosphere lightning or what's called transient luminous events,
Speaker 4: so they look like discs or red spots at the
Speaker 4: top of clouds or blue jets are kind of like
Speaker 4: jellyfish ghosts and UFOs and rave lights. Also, who doesn't
Speaker 4: love a well done backronym like transient red optical luminous
Speaker 4: lineament aka trolls. Only trolls don't like that. Also, a
Speaker 4: lot of folks asked about ball lightning, which has been
Speaker 4: described by one expert as a luminous sphere most often
Speaker 4: the size of a small child's head. Sure, that's a
Speaker 4: unit of measurement. The United States won't adopt the metric system,
Speaker 4: but we will use standards like the size of a
Speaker 4: small child head. But scientists still don't really understand what
Speaker 4: the deal is with ball lightning. Now, for a long time,
Speaker 4: up until the nineteen nineties, these were just dismissed as
Speaker 4: like hallucinations. So wow, we got a lot to learn
Speaker 4: future fulmonologists please figure it out. Thank you. Now, what
Speaker 4: about like dry lightning or heat lightning, the kind of
Speaker 4: lightning that we've had in California lately that has been
Speaker 4: sparking fires.
Speaker 6: Yeah, dry lightning is it's basically just lightning with very
Speaker 6: very minimal to no precipitation. So what happens is a
Speaker 6: storm comes through, like for instance, the one that we
Speaker 6: recently had, we're getting a bunch of moisture dished off
Speaker 6: from that tropical storm that was down there in the
Speaker 6: south east Pacific, shooting moisture like a laser gun into California.
Speaker 5: Boom poom. And at the same time, it's actually really hot.
Speaker 6: So what happens is you get your typical thunderstorm build up,
Speaker 6: but the precipitation of vaporates before it gets to the ground,
Speaker 6: and that's when you see clouds that are called virga,
Speaker 6: and virga is just just a formation, so it looks
Speaker 6: like stuff's coming out of the cloud, but then it
Speaker 6: evaporates and you still get lightning at the same time
Speaker 6: because there's such a build up of charge going on.
Speaker 5: Up there in the atmosphere.
Speaker 6: And the reason that's particularly dangerous, as we saw in
Speaker 6: California or other states in the Western US might see.
Speaker 6: Is that with that little precipitation, that means there's not
Speaker 6: a lot of water to come along with these lightning strikes,
Speaker 6: and if vegetation or fuels are extremely dry, then you
Speaker 6: get the potential for lightning costs fires, big events like
Speaker 6: the one we just had where we had eleven thousand
Speaker 6: lightning strikes and that caused hundreds of fires at the
Speaker 6: same time, you know, within two days.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's your potential.
Speaker 4: There oof eleven thousand lightning strikes. I look this up.
Speaker 4: That's real. That's a real number. Any How, hot is
Speaker 4: a lightning strike. I've read that it's potentially hotter than
Speaker 4: the sun.
Speaker 6: Hotter than the surface of the sun. So yeah, so
Speaker 6: it can reach home to like fifty to sixty thousand
Speaker 6: degrees fahrenheit. Oh yeah, it's freaking crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, that's nuts.
Speaker 4: And so you've got that striking a dry hillside and
Speaker 4: it's just like a like tinder box.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, So those are one of the things I would
Speaker 6: look for in fire weather under certain types of red
Speaker 6: flag conditions is the possibility of dry lightning.
Speaker 4: Okay, we're going to get back to fires.
Speaker 5: In a bit.
Speaker 4: But first, there are about eight million lightning strikes a
Speaker 4: day on Earth. But where are they happening? And you
Speaker 4: mentioned the Western United States and before you had mentioned
Speaker 4: shout out Florida, Ohio, great lightning. Why do some areas
Speaker 4: of the globe have more lightning and other stones or
Speaker 4: different types.
Speaker 6: A lot of it has to do with just the
Speaker 6: amount of moisture that they're getting. So in these tropical zones,
Speaker 6: what we see is there's a lot more moisture being
Speaker 6: pumped in by those warm ocean currents. The more motion
Speaker 6: and moisture is a pretty good precursor to lightning because
Speaker 6: it's what help forms those droplets. So in those areas,
Speaker 6: in those zones, they're usually a lot warmer. So now
Speaker 6: you have the heat that is rising convection, so warm
Speaker 6: air is rising and it combines with that moisture to
Speaker 6: help produce the sort of charge it's up there in
Speaker 6: the atmosphere, and that's why they typically get a lot
Speaker 6: more lightning. And it's just this constant flow and this
Speaker 6: constant pump of this warm air and this moisture, and
Speaker 6: solar radiance too a big factor in it.
Speaker 4: What is solar radiance?
Speaker 5: These are just the little particles that we get from
Speaker 5: the Sun. It's the energy that we receive from the Sun.
Speaker 6: So the Sun shoots out these photons and big beams
Speaker 6: of photons that get transported all the way through space
Speaker 6: onto Earth.
Speaker 5: With that, you have current.
Speaker 6: So the flow those particles is current, which creates heat,
Speaker 6: and that right there is a source of energy.
Speaker 5: So my solar is so big.
Speaker 6: It's the big differences in how the Earth is heated
Speaker 6: by the Sun and how it collects solar radiance that
Speaker 6: helps develop certain pressure and wind conditions.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, and so you have that whole big bag
Speaker 4: of mixed factors and with the right conditions, with the
Speaker 4: right conveection and moisture and ions like that is why
Speaker 4: some areas are just more lightning prone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's it's the climate of that of those
Speaker 6: particular areas or mountain ranges or another big one topography.
Speaker 6: So how that topography is laid out is pretty big too.
Speaker 4: What about if you're in the middle of a lightning
Speaker 4: storm and you're in your car, are you safe because
Speaker 4: of the rubber tires or does it act like a
Speaker 4: Faraday cage? How does a Faraday cage even work?
Speaker 6: If so so typically, yeah, you typically are pretty safe
Speaker 6: in your car, but that doesn't mean that there's not
Speaker 6: a possibility.
Speaker 5: Of getting hit. As our old friend Roy Sullivan, he
Speaker 5: understands and knows Roy, But typically you are a little
Speaker 5: bit safer because.
Speaker 6: Of that, But it doesn't mean that you know it's
Speaker 6: not going to find a way of resistance to find
Speaker 6: its way through your car and hit you.
Speaker 4: Just an audio note, something was buzzing in the background
Speaker 4: and it sounds like lightning, but Chris and I have
Speaker 4: no idea what it was, to be honest, so just
Speaker 4: consider it part of the lightning vibe.
Speaker 5: Folks.
Speaker 4: It's not followed by thunder each time, though, so don't worry.
Speaker 4: What about counting lightning and thunder? We've seen it in
Speaker 4: a million movies. You count, You can do a calculation.
Speaker 4: You can know how far away the storm is, if
Speaker 4: it's coming or going. Is that flim flam or is
Speaker 4: that real deal?
Speaker 5: Now, typically you actually kind of can.
Speaker 6: So the general rule is that you see a lightning
Speaker 6: strike and you count, and every five seconds is about
Speaker 6: a mile.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: I used to yeah, I used to.
Speaker 6: I used to hear a lot that you know, you
Speaker 6: count in the number of seconds. You count the number
Speaker 6: of miles away that there the storm is where the
Speaker 6: lightning strikes are, but it's about.
Speaker 5: Five seconds per mile, okay. Yeah, And so.
Speaker 6: If you're outside or whatever, you want to know if
Speaker 6: it's safe to go outside, then you generally try and
Speaker 6: get to a point where you see lightning but don't
Speaker 6: hear any thunder.
Speaker 4: Oh good to know. So it's far enough away where
Speaker 4: it's not going to come and get you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's tough because a lot of people think, okay, well,
Speaker 6: you know it's five miles away, but lightning travels very,
Speaker 6: very far, and you know it can strike you from
Speaker 6: quite some distance.
Speaker 4: How long do you think is a typical lightning bolt?
Speaker 5: Most of them actually aren't that long.
Speaker 6: But I mean you can be several miles out and
Speaker 6: that thing will find an area. If that area is
Speaker 6: charged and ready to go.
Speaker 4: For it, does it usually want to discharge or connect
Speaker 4: with a charge that's higher up? Like is that why
Speaker 4: there's lightning rods? Or do trees get zapped a lot?
Speaker 4: And how does that kill cows under trees? Which I
Speaker 4: don't know if that's a myth too.
Speaker 5: It can definitely kill animals.
Speaker 6: So the reason we have lightning rods or the reason
Speaker 6: that a very tall tree might be one of the
Speaker 6: worst spots to stand under or isolated tall trees is
Speaker 6: they're providing a path of lease resistance. So when these
Speaker 6: storms come, these charges from the ground are able to
Speaker 6: kind of flow up into those places and connect with
Speaker 6: the lightning that's coming out of the atmosphere. Because they
Speaker 6: happen to be tall, the charges are able.
Speaker 5: To meet a little bit earlier there.
Speaker 6: And if you happen to be the cow standing underneath it,
Speaker 6: and uh, those charges on the ground start flowing through areas,
Speaker 6: or lightning decides that it doesn't want to hit that tree,
Speaker 6: you're gonna get a little spark that's going to go
Speaker 6: off one leg, through the heart and down the other side.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they even had the crazy couple hundred reindeer actually
Speaker 6: think it was Canada done from a lightning strike.
Speaker 5: A ton of them dead because it had just.
Speaker 6: Done that travel travels up one side, goes right through
Speaker 6: the heart, troubles down the other.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I wonder if that's a painful death
Speaker 4: or if it's really quick.
Speaker 5: I hope it's quick.
Speaker 6: I would say you could ask the reindeer, but that's not.
Speaker 4: Not available for comment. Ps. This lightning strike that can
Speaker 4: over three hundred reindeer was in Norway in twenty sixteen
Speaker 4: and experts say that the lightning struck and it was
Speaker 4: the current carried through the ground and up through the
Speaker 4: hoofs that killed these servids all at once. So what
Speaker 4: tends to happen to a live things like humans is
Speaker 4: that the jolt zips through the body and stops the heart,
Speaker 4: which is why CPR after a lightning strike can be
Speaker 4: life saving. So we should all know how to do that. Probably,
Speaker 4: and one adages when thunder roars head indoors, you know,
Speaker 4: unless you want to risk being lightly toasted by the sky.
Speaker 4: I bet it smells like burned hair. Can you can
Speaker 4: you smell weather? Are you good at that? Can you
Speaker 4: smell certain weather? Or is that also a myth?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: Sometimes you can, and it just that has to do
Speaker 6: with the breakdown of the bacteria of leaving in the
Speaker 6: soil uh.
Speaker 5: And in the air. You know, it's that chemical that
Speaker 5: you're smelling. We'll say when a storm comes passing through.
Speaker 4: If you are me and you like to huff the
Speaker 4: dirt post rain, the smell is called petracore. And it
Speaker 4: comes from bacteria that make a scent called jasmin, which
Speaker 4: I want to be my pen name. And if you're like, dang,
Speaker 4: smell so good, someone should bottle it and sell it.
Speaker 4: May I direct your attention to Etsy dot com, which
Speaker 4: offers Petrocore centried oils. They have candles, people make incense.
Speaker 4: Did I just spend eight dollars and twenty two cents
Speaker 4: for a small bottle of Petrocore scented oil that smells
Speaker 4: like quote a summer storm and a bottle? I did?
Speaker 4: I did? Also. We are about to get to listener questions,
Speaker 4: but before we do, we're going to hear about sponsors
Speaker 4: of the show who have some deals for you. Those
Speaker 4: deals make it possible for us to throw some cash
Speaker 4: at worthwhile nonprofits each episode, and this week Chris asked
Speaker 4: that it goes to international relief teams, whose mission is
Speaker 4: to alleviate the suffering caused by poverty and disaster around
Speaker 4: the globe, from the forgotten corners of the world to
Speaker 4: right here at home by sending volunteer teams, relief supplies,
Speaker 4: and other assistant to improve the lives of those who
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Speaker 4: what they do at irteams dot org. And we're also
Speaker 4: sending an extra donation to Chris's research teams at westcats
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Speaker 4: All right, questions from our loyal patreon folks. Okay, I'm
Speaker 4: going to dive in to the lightning round. If he
Speaker 4: will correct and uh, just whatever answers strike you, go
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 5: The worst.
Speaker 4: Okay, so many patrons had so many questions and I
Speaker 4: tried to group them. So first time question asker Hr Bunka,
Speaker 4: as well as Liz Ropke, Mikaylee Egett, Lee Zoe, Jane B. Wilson,
Speaker 4: first time question asker Ali Rail, Kyle Evenstein, Hailey vanderwal
Speaker 4: Don Zwart, Leah Petter, they all had similar questions. Number one,
Speaker 4: have you seen the movie Sweet Home Alabama? Look at
Speaker 4: these It's what happens to San Win is struck by lightning.
Speaker 4: I've seen it. You just have to dig it up.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you know what this question is about?
Speaker 5: The glass? Yes?
Speaker 4: Is that a true thing? Like lightning on sand? What
Speaker 4: does that do? Hrbunker wants to know?
Speaker 5: Yeah? No, so that is true. Okay, it's what it
Speaker 5: happens is Uh, Typically these beaches.
Speaker 6: Are high in a certain type of material. Silica comes
Speaker 6: to mind, and what it does is the energy from
Speaker 6: the lightning fuses sand to this material and then you
Speaker 6: create things out of it.
Speaker 4: When you saw that movie where you are already into
Speaker 4: lightning and fire, or were you just like a like
Speaker 4: a Brace's face team being like Reese Witherspoon, what a babe?
Speaker 5: Yeah, kind of.
Speaker 6: I honestly was not on the route to be as
Speaker 6: wolved in lightning as I was.
Speaker 5: It was little vam all right. Yeah, weather first is cool.
Speaker 4: Okay. So many people thought that maybe that was not
Speaker 4: even real, so you've changed their world. Okay. This next
Speaker 4: question was asked by Jessica Chamberlain, Ali corn Corey Navis,
Speaker 4: Christian Mahaney, Nathan Wilgaroth Ruby, Johnstone m and first time
Speaker 4: question asker Tamina Schalls. Temina had so many questions but
Speaker 4: wanted to know. All of these people wanted to know
Speaker 4: how dangerous is it to shower or use the computer
Speaker 4: during a thunderstorm? Is it true that you shouldn't use
Speaker 4: the shower when it is thundering and lightning?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean a good rule of being outside is
Speaker 6: get the heck out of the pool, right or the
Speaker 6: lake or the river, and when you're inside for proper
Speaker 6: lightning safety measures.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you kind of want to do the same thing.
Speaker 6: Get away from anything that's electrically circuited or water as
Speaker 6: best as you can. And because that's just electrical charges
Speaker 6: are going to find those channels to travel through because.
Speaker 5: It's easy for it to travel through, So you know,
Speaker 5: do your best. I probably would. I'm sure there's a
Speaker 5: lot of people out there who are like.
Speaker 6: Ooh, a lightning storm, gonna go take a shower. But
Speaker 6: you know, but it can be dangerous. You're better off
Speaker 6: just not being there, Okay, shower or next to any
Speaker 6: sort of electrical circuitry.
Speaker 4: Okay, good to know. So just to take a load off,
Speaker 4: take a gander, lay Low, good to know. Jesse Markowitz,
Speaker 4: Jake Skuyler, Alexander Brown, and just one wanted to know.
Speaker 4: Is there lightning on other planets?
Speaker 5: Oh? Absolutely there is. Yeah, It's it's not something that
Speaker 5: I've really doven into. But Jupiter gets a ton of lightning.
Speaker 4: What Yeah?
Speaker 5: Crazy?
Speaker 6: I mean, the dang things have got the storm the
Speaker 6: size of side of another planet on it. Yeah, so
Speaker 6: it's going to produce a lot of lightning, and it's
Speaker 6: very similar processes that happens here on Earth, I believe.
Speaker 4: Okay, just a side note. I know that Jupiter has
Speaker 4: a huge ruddy beauty mark that is really just a
Speaker 4: whirl of meteorological chaos. But I was like, what is
Speaker 4: that big red spot called? I feel like I know
Speaker 4: it by a camera, right, So I looked it up
Speaker 4: and it's called the Great Red Spot. That's like if
Speaker 4: you named your firstborn child the baby thing. It's clear,
Speaker 4: it's bold, it's a choice.
Speaker 6: And then Saturn is kind of another big one. And
Speaker 6: I'm sure someone out there is studying space lightning and
Speaker 6: you know, sees all kinds of cool crap. But yeah,
Speaker 6: I do know that there's lightning on other planets. You know,
Speaker 6: there's similar processes between electrical charges. It's the universal.
Speaker 4: I'm going to have to find an astrofolminologist. There's got
Speaker 4: everyone out there.
Speaker 5: Somebody, yeah, oh yeah, there's gotta be somebody out there.
Speaker 4: Let's see. First time question asker Jean McLean Gabriel Freisen.
Speaker 4: First time question asker Hope All wanted to know. So,
Speaker 4: in Hope's words, so when people get struck by lightning,
Speaker 4: to get those scars that look like lightning, So what
Speaker 4: causes those? Have you seen those?
Speaker 6: You know, that'd probably be someone more in tune to
Speaker 6: dealing with injuries and medical Yeah. I don't know how
Speaker 6: those scars are formed. I know Harry Potter got his, Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, from a.
Speaker 5: Very high energy concentrated spell.
Speaker 6: Yes, I don't recommend it, no, but exactly what's going
Speaker 6: on inside of the body that causes it to get
Speaker 6: those specific scars.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: Okay, of course I look this up and these raised
Speaker 4: marks are called Liechtenberg figures, and they're caused by blood
Speaker 4: vessels explode vading from the heat and the electric discharge
Speaker 4: of those branching fractally patterns of the lightning. And they
Speaker 4: look first and foremost very ouchy, and secondly they're gorgeous.
Speaker 4: They're weirdly so pretty also painful. If you go to
Speaker 4: instagram dot com slash ologies this week, I will treat
Speaker 4: you to a gallery. Oh the scars, the blisters, the intrigue.
Speaker 4: Do human beings walk around with a certain electrical.
Speaker 5: Charge they can?
Speaker 6: There's uh, I mean there's Our bodies are transporting electrons
Speaker 6: and stuff all the time, and our brains are constantly
Speaker 6: standing out and receiving electrical signals.
Speaker 4: Okay, if you've ever touched something and gotten like a
Speaker 4: little zip spark, congrats, that's pretty much mini lightning. But
Speaker 4: let's talk about even bigger effects, like giant mind blowing ones,
Speaker 4: like big Bang scale effects.
Speaker 5: These electromagnetic discharges from lightning.
Speaker 6: I've actually been shown to antimatter, which is pretty freaking cool.
Speaker 6: So yeah, so these these charges produce really high I'm
Speaker 6: strong gamma rays and X rays, so really high frequencies,
Speaker 6: and the gamma rays react with the air that's around
Speaker 6: it and produce positrons positron prime.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I like that. I think that if it was
Speaker 5: a transformer.
Speaker 6: But it creates positrons, which are kind of the antimatter
Speaker 6: version of electrons. And so what happens is after they
Speaker 6: produce these and they run around and these gamma rays,
Speaker 6: there's so much energy, they knock the neutrons out of nitrogen,
Speaker 6: and that unstable nitrogen then releases the positrons and then eventually,
Speaker 6: you know, they'll end up finding an electron, collide with it,
Speaker 6: and they annihilate each other.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So imagine imagine you just walking around on the
Speaker 6: street and all of a sudden, uh, an anti alley
Speaker 6: comes up and you guys bump into each other and
Speaker 6: then you're just gone and you unihilate each other.
Speaker 4: Is that possible on Is it possible to look at
Speaker 4: how that happens with lightning and like figure out how
Speaker 4: to do that on Earth?
Speaker 5: I don't, I don't know. Bizarre Superman had some trouble
Speaker 5: with Bizarro Superman.
Speaker 6: So I'm not sure that, but yeah, no, that's that's
Speaker 6: something that's really cool. These uh, these researchers in Japan,
Speaker 6: we're actually the ones just like, yeah, it creates antimatter,
Speaker 6: freaking positrons.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's amazing. And a bunch of listeners
Speaker 4: had a really good question. Stephen Clark, sid Got Kajar,
Speaker 4: Adam Weaver, Haley Bandawal, Katie Coast, Nicole Wackery, Ross Owen Qualls,
Speaker 4: and Hugh Plumber all wanted to know. Is capturing lightning
Speaker 4: a viable energy source?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 6: Man, this is crazy, right, this is okay, okay. So
Speaker 6: the thing is that lightning produces so much elector there's
Speaker 6: there's so much energy there. You're talking somewhere between like
Speaker 6: one hundreds to a billion volts of current possible there.
Speaker 6: And so my research associate and I have actually kind.
Speaker 5: Of dove into this.
Speaker 6: And what you would have to do is you would
Speaker 6: have to find a way of putting up some sort
Speaker 6: of rod or at least our idea. Nobody's steal this
Speaker 6: because we're working on it.
Speaker 5: Is you take something and Ryan, as the lightning start
Speaker 5: is about to happen, you give it a really strong
Speaker 5: charge so that it has the highest charge of anything
Speaker 5: out there. So lightning essentially is attracted to this thing.
Speaker 5: You know, you're a really very attraction.
Speaker 6: Maybe it looks like a tree, and so when lightning
Speaker 6: strikes it. You would have to do is you'd have
Speaker 6: to have a really really strong, negatively charged base so
Speaker 6: that it helps kind of contain into in a uh,
Speaker 6: some of that energy. But at the same time you
Speaker 6: would have to maybe keep that energy flowing so that
Speaker 6: that that you would get is maybe direct current, and
Speaker 6: you would have to keep that current flowing. And what
Speaker 6: you would probably have to do is it would have
Speaker 6: to go into some sort of station where it's able
Speaker 6: to be broken up or able to be chopped up
Speaker 6: and then distributed to other parts, because you don't want
Speaker 6: a million vaults going.
Speaker 5: To people's homes.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: That's about a million times more more voltage than then
Speaker 6: you then comes out of your little electric.
Speaker 5: Socket, say so is it possible? Ah? Man, it's it's
Speaker 5: really tough.
Speaker 6: I know, Tesla, the old old Nikola Tesla, that guy
Speaker 6: m hm he uh, he was kind of working on it,
Speaker 6: at least he was thinking about it. So that's what
Speaker 6: that's what he was working on when he was there
Speaker 6: in Colorado. Oh, radio way, just you're sending frequencies back
Speaker 6: and forth.
Speaker 4: I had no idea that there were frequencies involved. I
Speaker 4: do remember that he was in love with a pigeon,
Speaker 4: which I know that there was so much more to
Speaker 4: his story, But is.
Speaker 5: That what you got out of his whole career? What
Speaker 5: was the vision's name that? I don't know.
Speaker 4: He was so in love though, and I really felt
Speaker 4: for him Fred.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I really felt for him I know he did so much,
Speaker 4: But that part I really connected with. I was like,
Speaker 4: I get it that Pigure's never going to love you, okay,
Speaker 4: just because I know that we're all wondering and we
Speaker 4: all want to name something after it. This pigeon's name
Speaker 4: was not Fred. It was a lady pigeon, a brilliant
Speaker 4: white pigeon with gray tips at the end of its wings.
Speaker 4: And Tesla once said, quote, I loved that pigeon as
Speaker 4: a man loves a woman, and she loved me as
Speaker 4: long as I had her. There was a purpose to
Speaker 4: my life. So it was requited that changes everything. Although
Speaker 4: it did make a final visit to him in his
Speaker 4: hotel room in nineteen twenty two, and by his account,
Speaker 4: her eyes shone a brilliant, burning white light, and it
Speaker 4: was a message that she was dying. And he said
Speaker 4: he knew at that moment that his life's work, which
Speaker 4: involved huge, history changing accomplishments in electricity and plasma and
Speaker 4: radio waves, he knew at that moment his work was over.
Speaker 4: But he also remained celibate and never married ever, partly
Speaker 4: because he thought it would interfere with those accomplishments. And
Speaker 4: you know what they say, doves before loves. Okay, Sean
Speaker 4: Johnson wants to know canna bolts of lightning actually produce
Speaker 4: one point one jigger watts of power.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, that's great.
Speaker 6: I'm assuming he's referring to the old back to the future.
Speaker 4: Yep, old Doc Brown.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I love that, My god, what what the hell?
Speaker 5: I'm not sure if it's that much or not. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think give me a second here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, are you gonna do some back of the envelope calculations? Yeah,
Speaker 4: calculus is happening.
Speaker 6: Uh yeah, it's uh yeah, they can produce one point
Speaker 6: two on uh jigawatts?
Speaker 5: Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 4: I can't believe we actually got to ask a lighting scientist.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's there's obviously a range of jigawatts that
Speaker 6: lighting produces, but yeah, I think it could be it's
Speaker 6: in there.
Speaker 4: Wow. Okay, we finally know that. That's amazing. All right.
Speaker 4: If you're mad at me right now because I said
Speaker 4: jigawats and not gigawatts, please blame Back to the Future
Speaker 4: writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gail, who thought gigawatts were
Speaker 4: pronounced jigawats, and so they spilled it with a J
Speaker 4: and there's script and they shot the whole movie, and
Speaker 4: then afterward they're like, oh, it's gigawatts. People that have
Speaker 4: Google also pronouncing it with the J sound like jigawats
Speaker 4: is technically the very old method of speaking this word.
Speaker 4: So it is likely that the Back to the Future
Speaker 4: writers heard an older recording or a professor used the
Speaker 4: softer J sound, and that's why they spelled it wrong.
Speaker 4: And that's why a lot of us say it wrong.
Speaker 4: It's like, if only we could ask the person who
Speaker 4: named gigawatts how they wanted it pronounced, like we can
Speaker 4: the creator of the jiff who says it's pronounced jiff
Speaker 4: and don't at me, I'm your Internet dad. How dare you? Okay,
Speaker 4: A few patrons wanted to know about flaming Spinney's, such
Speaker 4: as first time question askers Rachel Noble, Alyssa Rose, and
Speaker 4: Jamie Almodovar first time asking a question. Are fire tornadoes
Speaker 4: a real thing? How often do they occur? If so?
Speaker 5: Oh shit, I love this question.
Speaker 6: Fired tornadoes, spinning, rotating convective vortex is of terror. No,
Speaker 6: So we're going to to break it down a little
Speaker 6: bit here, okay, And a true fire tornado has a
Speaker 6: very specific definition. Of course, the media loves the term
Speaker 6: fire tornado or fire nato because it sounds a lot
Speaker 6: more badass and firewhirl right honestly, I mean, come on,
Speaker 6: the only thing more bad ass than a fire tornado
Speaker 6: would be a fire sharknado, and we haven't seen those yet,
Speaker 6: but I can't wait until that happens. So most of
Speaker 6: the time, what you're seeing or fire worlds, they're also
Speaker 6: fire devils, which are the equivalent of a dust devil
Speaker 6: just a fire.
Speaker 5: But most of.
Speaker 6: What you see out there and fires are either fire
Speaker 6: worlds which are on the smaller end, or convective rotating
Speaker 6: vortex you know, in meteorology or in any sort of
Speaker 6: weather stuff. If it's got the name vortex in it,
Speaker 6: it's usually really cool. Okay, so we loved, we love
Speaker 6: to call things vortex.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So a true fire tornado, there's actually only been a
Speaker 6: couple maybe three, that we've been able to observe, at
Speaker 6: least since we've had the technology and capabilities to do so.
Speaker 6: So in order for it to be a true fire tornado,
Speaker 6: you have to have something that's rotating violently, and it
Speaker 6: has to be connected to the ground and to a cloud,
Speaker 6: so to some sort of cumulus cloud, whether it's a
Speaker 6: queless formation in the sky or a thunderhead or a pyrocumulus.
Speaker 4: There was a nearby canine who crashed our recording and
Speaker 4: was very excited to chime in about this. So when
Speaker 4: you hear it, just pretend this conversation is like happen
Speaker 4: on a country porch off swing with your favorite lightning buddy.
Speaker 4: This is just ambiance.
Speaker 5: Cloud up above, and that has to have some sort
Speaker 5: of rotation as well.
Speaker 6: Most of the quote unquote what people call fire tornadoes
Speaker 6: aren't typically connected to that cumulus cloud up there in
Speaker 6: the atmosphere, so then it's usually just the fire world.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, yeah, but so if we're going by that,
Speaker 6: the true definition of a fire tornado, In other words,
Speaker 6: a tornado as defined as rotating, violently rotating column of
Speaker 6: air that is connected to the ground and to the cloud.
Speaker 5: Only one that is made from fire. There really has
Speaker 5: only been a couple that we know of or have
Speaker 5: been able to see. The one. I'm sure you've probably
Speaker 5: heard all about, the one that happened in the Loyalton
Speaker 5: fire just recently.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, okay, So just to refresh your memory, this
Speaker 4: was August fifteenth, twenty twenty, near Hallelujah Junction in California
Speaker 4: by the Nevada border, northwest of Reno, and Tasha Ferrell
Speaker 4: aka that one girl talkt on Twitter captured video of
Speaker 4: the dry Golden Chaparral of the Sierras with this raging
Speaker 4: brush fire and a column of spiraling smoke in the middle.
Speaker 4: Reaction all over the world was really unifying.
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 4: Twenty twenty one?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that one actually true fire tornado. And the cool
Speaker 6: thing about that is, even though they might have had
Speaker 6: a little bit of warning ahead of time, the National
Speaker 6: Weather Service was able to issue a tornado warning. And
Speaker 6: pretty sure that's never been done before because fire tornadoes
Speaker 6: or fireworlds are extremely difficult to predict, so that was
Speaker 6: kind of a stepping stone in the cool science of
Speaker 6: fire behavior and fire tornadoes. Is the fact that the
Speaker 6: National Weather Service was actually able to issue a tornado
Speaker 6: warning for that particular event, which really cool.
Speaker 4: That kind of dovetails into a first time question. Asker
Speaker 4: Val Lucas wanted to know, how do the lightning tracker
Speaker 4: maps up date so fast? Like the flash out the
Speaker 4: window and then the dot popping up on the map
Speaker 4: are instantaneous. So is technology getting better to track this stuff?
Speaker 5: Oh? Absolutely, absolutely, and it's really cool. I mean it's
Speaker 5: come a long way.
Speaker 6: I mean before I use to not be able to
Speaker 6: get lightning updates for every so many minutes or so
Speaker 6: or hours, and now a lightning mapp.
Speaker 5: Will update every fifteen seconds.
Speaker 4: How do they do that?
Speaker 5: Where they do that? It's really cool.
Speaker 6: I mean, so when lightning strikes give out these electromagnetic pulses,
Speaker 6: the satellite systems are able to pick.
Speaker 5: Up on those, Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: Like pretty much instantaneously almost so then it just gets
Speaker 6: sent back down to, you know, to whatever modeling system
Speaker 6: is being used. And technology is great. Computer programmers are
Speaker 6: even better, and they're able to make this stuff work
Speaker 6: in close to real time.
Speaker 4: Oh. Katie Coast, who does a lot of transcription for us,
Speaker 4: it is amazing, says it bothers me that they call
Speaker 4: Thor the god of thunder because that's a sound. Right,
Speaker 4: he should be the god of lightning. Wants to know.
Speaker 4: Does that bug you too?
Speaker 5: I think he's badass either way.
Speaker 6: Okay, but yes, he should be Thor god of lightning
Speaker 6: because you don't have thunder without lightning, right, So yeah, he.
Speaker 5: Really should be the god of lightning. You know what,
Speaker 5: that's a good point.
Speaker 6: I've never really sat there and pick picked it apart
Speaker 6: and threw a fit because of it, But now that
Speaker 6: I think of it, yeah, he should be the god
Speaker 6: of lightning.
Speaker 5: Why not. It's lightning that he summons and uses.
Speaker 4: You know, Glad you have something to be bad about.
Speaker 5: He's not going around going take that.
Speaker 4: I'm really loud. I'm really loud, and that's my power. Actually,
Speaker 4: we did have a people ask Emily A wants to
Speaker 4: know is it true that thunder is the sound of lightning?
Speaker 4: And a few other people wanted to know. First time
Speaker 4: question askers and boot quakers, Luna Lowry and Kate h
Speaker 4: why it's so scary? Why is thunder scary? Any idea?
Speaker 4: Is it a certain like frequency or is it just
Speaker 4: because it's so loud?
Speaker 5: Well, i'd be perception right. Some might find it scary.
Speaker 6: I would find it extremely fascinating and joyous, somewhat of
Speaker 6: an adrenaline Russia at certain moments. Yeah, but yeah, thunder
Speaker 6: is the sound of lightning, because without lightning you don't
Speaker 6: have thunder, kind of like we talked about.
Speaker 5: And because lightning there's so much energy and so much
Speaker 5: heat that is created by lightning that energy, the air
Speaker 5: around it cannot expand fast enough, so pressure is shot
Speaker 5: out around these areas where lightning strike has just gone
Speaker 5: down and produces a shockwave, and that shockwave becomes a
Speaker 5: sound wave, and so that's what we hear thunder.
Speaker 6: It can be really scary because the ground is shaking,
Speaker 6: the airs rumbling. It sounds like a war zone out there.
Speaker 6: Sometimes you have no idea when that lightning strike is
Speaker 6: going to happen or where it's going to happen, so
Speaker 6: you run for your life and hiding a corner under
Speaker 6: the bed or something like that and just wait for
Speaker 6: it to get over.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, I guess I could be scary.
Speaker 4: I heard I heard a little dog in the background.
Speaker 4: How does that dog do with lightning and thunder?
Speaker 5: That is my neighbor's dog.
Speaker 4: Okay, so you're like, I don't know.
Speaker 5: It comes out. Yeah, I don't know. It's a little one,
Speaker 5: so I'm assuming it doesn't do too good. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 5: even big ones. Man, I used to have a dog
Speaker 5: that did not like it.
Speaker 4: Hence thundershirts or pressure garments for pups and people alike
Speaker 4: who knew that consistent gentle pressure or like a hug,
Speaker 4: releases anxiety soothing hormones. Well, scientists and also people, but
Speaker 4: not makers of girdles. You just you went too far
Speaker 4: with those. Reel it in a little A bunch of people.
Speaker 4: Sam Healey, first time question asker, JJ Pierce, Chris Moore,
Speaker 4: first time question asker Rachel Dashiel and Asia Jaeger wanted
Speaker 4: to know about hair standing up during a thunderstorm, and
Speaker 4: Sam says, my shoulder length hair was standing completely on
Speaker 4: end once when I was standing in a field during
Speaker 4: a thunderstorm, and I found out later that was not
Speaker 4: a good sign. I was fourteen, so forgive my ignorance,
Speaker 4: but if you're around something dangerous like a lightning storm,
Speaker 4: or does your hair just statically kind of do that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a reaction to the static that's in the atmosphere.
Speaker 6: So what's happening during a lightning event is you're producing
Speaker 6: something that's electric and magnetic, and there's electrostatic that's happening
Speaker 6: before these light stricture coming or as a storm is approaching. Oh,
Speaker 6: we know this because part of what we do is
Speaker 6: we go out there with something that reads electromagnetism.
Speaker 5: Dude, there's no electricity in here.
Speaker 6: We shouldn't be getting any emf not to try and
Speaker 6: find ghosts or anything or spirits, but to try and
Speaker 6: find and look at the magnetic properties of a storm
Speaker 6: that comes through a lightning event. And you can see
Speaker 6: that the em meter, you know, fluctuates a lot. I
Speaker 6: mean we'll hit high note at the time that a
Speaker 6: storm's overhead. So if there's a storm approaching, especially if
Speaker 6: there's that much build up of an electrical charge a
Speaker 6: static in the atmosphere, yeah, your hairs are gonna rise
Speaker 6: right on up, just like the old uh you know,
Speaker 6: rub a balloon on the carpet, put on your head
Speaker 6: and watch your hair go all over the place.
Speaker 4: Does that mean you should run for cover somewhere, preferably
Speaker 4: not under a big tree that's by itself.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, unless those are just your spidy seen
Speaker 6: it says Tingling a little bit. I'd probably, you know,
Speaker 6: move because it's definitely a sign that there's something electrically
Speaker 6: going on in the atmosphere. And you don't want to
Speaker 6: be around when those when those lightning strikes come down.
Speaker 4: Now, some people would want to go out in a
Speaker 4: lightning storm on purpose. And chiong Nan wants to know
Speaker 4: how true is the Ben Franklin story, the key, the kite?
Speaker 4: Is it all bullshit?
Speaker 6: No, this actually happens, So lucky enough for you. I
Speaker 6: went back and read all the original letters that Ben
Speaker 6: Franklin was sending to his colleague about the experiments he
Speaker 6: was doing with electricity, and actually one of my favorite
Speaker 6: quotes evers from.
Speaker 4: One of those okay, quick aside. Chris sent this Ben
Speaker 4: Franklin passage to me later and it was written around
Speaker 4: April seventeen forty nine, and it reads quote, if they
Speaker 4: are driven by winds against mountains, those mountains, being less electrified,
Speaker 4: attract them. If much loaded the electrical fire is at
Speaker 4: once taken from the whole cloud, and in leaving it
Speaker 4: flashes brightly and it cracks loudly. And from what I gather,
Speaker 4: Franklin also sometimes referred to lightning storms or lightning bolts
Speaker 4: as thunder gusts, which honestly is like an ACES term
Speaker 4: for flatulence anyway.
Speaker 6: But yeah, he was so he basically was just trying
Speaker 6: to show how electricity works and how you get a
Speaker 6: separation of charges and you get a build up of static.
Speaker 6: And he went, Okay, well, hey, guess what. There's electricity
Speaker 6: in the atmosphere. There's electricity in the sky. So in
Speaker 6: order to show this experiment, he goes out and throw
Speaker 6: something up there, something that he knows is going to
Speaker 6: attract the electrical charges that are in the sky.
Speaker 5: Kite.
Speaker 6: There's a perfect thing for that, and lo and behold
Speaker 6: he shows, hey, there is electricity up there.
Speaker 4: There are several people who wrote in this boggled me,
Speaker 4: saying that a lot of people in their family had
Speaker 4: been hit. Renee of David and Renees Woodworking and Marty
Speaker 4: Goodwin and May May is the first time question ask her,
Speaker 4: and so are Renee and David. I'll read May's question.
Speaker 4: Omg exclamation exclamation point. So my partner and my brother
Speaker 4: and I were all struck by lightning at the same time,
Speaker 4: well fishing, I know, all unharmed.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: I'm wondering about what things people who survived being struck
Speaker 4: by lightning may experience, like any long term medical side effects.
Speaker 4: But ps I found out later that my mom and
Speaker 4: her brother were struck at the same time, and their
Speaker 4: grandfather and his sister were struck at the same time.
Speaker 4: And then Marty Goodwin says, my family is prone to
Speaker 4: attracting lightning. I guess two members of their family have
Speaker 4: been struck, one fatally. And then Renee and David said
Speaker 4: that multiple people on the mom's side of the family
Speaker 4: have all been struck by lightning and lived. What the
Speaker 4: hell's going on?
Speaker 6: What in the hell I can't courage that many listeners
Speaker 6: that know sperience, but this I haven't met anybody yet who's.
Speaker 5: Actually been struck. Holy crap.
Speaker 6: I mean, oh my gosh, I mean the people who
Speaker 6: who are struck at the same time. Okay, obviously they're
Speaker 6: well I guess maybe not obviously. Sorry I shouldn't say that,
Speaker 6: but they're in and undergoing the same electrical experience at
Speaker 6: the same time. So just like the cows in the
Speaker 6: field are just like the reindeer. They're in an area
Speaker 6: that is highly charged, and that charge wants to try
Speaker 6: and neutralize itself. So it's going to try and find
Speaker 6: a path that it can extend itself through the fact.
Speaker 5: That there are multiple people in an area during the
Speaker 5: same event that all got struck, isn't too surprising.
Speaker 6: Why it's happening to some people's family members more. You know,
Speaker 6: that's a really good question. I would probably start to
Speaker 6: question it myself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would be like, I guess we're cursed someone,
Speaker 4: there's an oracle, someone pissed off. I don't know, I'll
Speaker 4: look into it. Okay, you were in no way cursed. JKJJK.
Speaker 4: You are exciting and special because you just impressed a
Speaker 4: professional folmonologist, which I imagine is hard to do. Also,
Speaker 4: I've looked for any scientific evidence that getting struck by
Speaker 4: lightning could possibly run in families was genetic, and honestly,
Speaker 4: the only thing I could come up with is that
Speaker 4: maybe it's hereditary to just enjoy the outdoors. And one
Speaker 4: commenter on a kra discussion on the matter, who is
Speaker 4: not a lightning expert, mind you said. Quote the idea
Speaker 4: that some people have some mysterious trait that somehow attracts
Speaker 4: lightning as nonsense, a myth, balder dash and hogwash. End quote.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: Impressed by the vocab tones a little salty, however, really,
Speaker 4: what the hell does anyone know? Scientists used to explain
Speaker 4: bird migration by confidently saying that during the winter, all
Speaker 4: the birds just went and hung out on the moon.
Speaker 4: We don't know anything. We're all such stupid babies, even scientists.
Speaker 4: They're just trying to figure it out. It's beautiful. Okay,
Speaker 4: let's keep this knowledge fire arraging. Okay, a few people
Speaker 4: Metal and Lewis and Markshavaz, Metal and Lewis. Person time
Speaker 4: question asker want to know about volcanic lightning or wildfire
Speaker 4: smoke inducing lightning? Does that happen?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, absolutely so. They kind of have similar components
Speaker 5: to them.
Speaker 6: So they're called pyrocumulus clouds, which are the cumulus clouds
Speaker 6: that are formed by fire or by lightning, and then
Speaker 6: they can later evolve sometimes if enough heat and moisture
Speaker 6: charges being pumped into them to create pyrochumulonimous clouds and
Speaker 6: for the ones that produce lightning. So what you have
Speaker 6: is during a fire, especially, is fire's burning and it's
Speaker 6: releasing a lot of energy through heat and moisture. So
Speaker 6: much energy and so much heat, and you see this
Speaker 6: more often on really really hot fires that are burning
Speaker 6: really really hot. We get something called pyrocnvection, which is
Speaker 6: eventually that heat and that moisture starts to rise.
Speaker 5: Because hot air rises.
Speaker 6: It mixes with the cooler air and kind of like
Speaker 6: a typical thunderstorm, as it arises, it starts to condense,
Speaker 6: and it starts to form humulus clouds or pyrocumulus clouds.
Speaker 6: And the crazy thing is that the updrafts of this
Speaker 6: hot air rising, the updrafts of these suckers can reach
Speaker 6: like up to one hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there's just there's so much going in there.
Speaker 6: So if the fire continuously pumping that heat and that
Speaker 6: moisture into these cumulus clouds, they keep growing and growing
Speaker 6: and growing, and you get more vertical movement until eventually
Speaker 6: pyrocumulanimous cloud is formed, and then you start to get
Speaker 6: kind of that charge the charge separation. You get the
Speaker 6: banging around of those those particles up there produced from
Speaker 6: the ash and from the smoke that allow the moisture
Speaker 6: to kind of condense on them, which then helps create
Speaker 6: the passing of charges.
Speaker 5: Like we talked about. You'll get lightning from that, or
Speaker 5: you can get lightning from that. Oh, and it's very
Speaker 5: similar kind of with volcanoes. Because volcanoes so much heat
Speaker 5: and they're releasing all that gas and the ash material
Speaker 5: creating these really dense smoke plumes, they start to create
Speaker 5: a static ionization in a sense, and you get all
Speaker 5: these charged particles ready to go, you know, all happy
Speaker 5: and excited, an adrenaline rush for them again, and they
Speaker 5: can produce lightning. So it's really cool. Yeah, pictures of
Speaker 5: volcanic lightning are actually really sick. I don't know if
Speaker 5: you or anybody out.
Speaker 6: There listening has ever seen pictures of volcanic lightning if
Speaker 6: you haven't looked it up, because yeah, it's hella sick.
Speaker 5: It's hell hella sick.
Speaker 4: Bro the most cal Northern California, scuy.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 4: I looked it up and it's true. Volcanic lightning pictures
Speaker 4: are hella sweet. And they look like if a mountain
Speaker 4: had a midlife crisis and decided to become a heavy
Speaker 4: metal disco like Smoke Machine, Strobe Lights danger, Like if
Speaker 4: you looked through the plumes of ash, there has got
Speaker 4: to be a yetty in there doing a guitar solo.
Speaker 4: I have just a couple more questions from listeners because
Speaker 4: I know, I'm just I literally we could go on
Speaker 4: for hours, okay. Elizabeth Edwards and Rachel and Maria Jora
Speaker 4: Vivia Elizabeth Rachel, both first time question askers, wanted to
Speaker 4: know a little bit more about like what percentage of
Speaker 4: wildfires are caused by lightning strikes globally, and also are
Speaker 4: these wildfires changing because of climate change? And should we
Speaker 4: be using more indigenous land management to kind of prevent
Speaker 4: the big burns.
Speaker 5: I've been waiting for a question like this, ha ha. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we know in climate's going to come into it.
Speaker 6: So yeah, well, I'm not quite sure exactly what the
Speaker 6: global statistics are.
Speaker 5: In the US, I know.
Speaker 6: Roughly eighty to ninety percent of fires are caused by
Speaker 6: humans and then the other percent caused by lightning, so
Speaker 6: ten to twenty percent, But that also depends on the
Speaker 6: region you're in, So you know, some areas of the Southwest,
Speaker 6: or say Alaska might or Montana or Idaho might have
Speaker 6: a lot more lightning caused fires or a greater percentage
Speaker 6: of lightning caused fires than other places. Australia too, they
Speaker 6: get quite a few lightning caused fires. And you look
Speaker 6: at places like Australia or Alaska, you know, it's not
Speaker 6: uncommon for them to have kind of like what we
Speaker 6: had here, you know, one hundred lightning caused fires within
Speaker 6: a twenty.
Speaker 5: Four hour period.
Speaker 6: But overall, human cause fires are kind of the big one. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And we actually don't mind lightning caused fires unless they're
Speaker 6: during events such as is the one that we just
Speaker 6: had here in California, or unless it's a fire itself
Speaker 6: producing some sort of lightning activity, because a lot of
Speaker 6: the lightning caused fires that happens tend to happen in
Speaker 6: remote areas where we're trying to get around to this. Okay,
Speaker 6: if it's happening in an area far off somewhere in
Speaker 6: the mountains, let it burn it, let it ravage the
Speaker 6: fuel and take over.
Speaker 4: So Chris says that lightning caused fires really become an
Speaker 4: issue when they're related to an event like the one
Speaker 4: we had recently here in California where there were hundreds
Speaker 4: of them at once, which with new weather patterns and
Speaker 4: droughts and warmer, drier weather, may happen more often.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so climate change is one of the big issues
Speaker 5: obviously as we treat into fires and even the possibility
Speaker 5: of more lightning and lightning caused fires, because climate change
Speaker 5: or global warming brings more extremes, and we might see
Speaker 5: more extreme and heat during summertimes in certain states of
Speaker 5: the Western US. And more heat is not a good
Speaker 5: scenario for fire because that also brings lower humidities, and
Speaker 5: fire likes to burn in high heat and low humidity.
Speaker 5: And we're also starting to see some really extreme wind
Speaker 5: events that we typically haven't seen before, I haven't recognized before.
Speaker 5: I mean some places during these fire events, you'll see
Speaker 5: gusts of wind up to like eighty miles per hour,
Speaker 5: and you're just like, holy shit, how do you even
Speaker 5: do something with that? Yeah, you know, and you don't.
Speaker 6: That's the thing is you get the hell out of
Speaker 6: the way and let the fire kind of go. And
Speaker 6: we're just we're not used to this kind of change yet.
Speaker 6: And unfortunately we're also in a place here in California specifically,
Speaker 6: where you get typically you get rained during winter seasons
Speaker 6: and then fuel and vegetation grows, and then it gets
Speaker 6: extremely hot and dry in the summertime, and then that
Speaker 6: vegetation grows out.
Speaker 5: So there's a lot more fuel for there to burn. Well.
Speaker 6: At the same time, you get these extreme drought conditions
Speaker 6: that a lot of places are experiencing, and that's not
Speaker 6: good because then you don't get the rain to help
Speaker 6: the fuel moisture levels. So you're kind of fighting a
Speaker 6: losing game. As things start to change here, and we
Speaker 6: see this positive feedback loop with climate change. Not only that,
Speaker 6: but the Arctic, the Arctic Circle. If you or any
Speaker 6: of your followers, any guys out there, saw the Arctic
Speaker 6: Circle reaching above one hundred degrees.
Speaker 5: This year, you know.
Speaker 6: And we're starting to see more and more fires burning
Speaker 6: out there, and so there's there's a lot that has
Speaker 6: to be taken in. There's a lot that needs to
Speaker 6: be studied. Of course, we cannot tie one single event
Speaker 6: or one single fire to climate change, but we can
Speaker 6: step back and look at the overall factors that made
Speaker 6: it possible.
Speaker 5: Yes, there is something within climate change that is adding
Speaker 5: to the extreme offense that we're seeing and if things
Speaker 5: are burning hotter, then you're going to see more and
Speaker 5: stronger fire behavior. I'm wanting to see more extreme fire behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean the future fire research. There's going to be
Speaker 5: so much research.
Speaker 6: That that's going to be cool to do in the
Speaker 6: Arctic areas from unfortunate consequences.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this research is important and you should get
Speaker 4: some dollar bills for it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, you know, everybody should.
Speaker 6: Yeah, something that is also very very important in research
Speaker 6: as you can throw all the money at it you want,
Speaker 6: and you can get all the answers and collect all
Speaker 6: the data you want to. And it's great to have
Speaker 6: that knowledge because it might lead to something in the future.
Speaker 6: But if some of that knowledge isn't implemented at the
Speaker 6: policy level, then you have a lot tougher time for sure,
Speaker 6: you know, with what's going on and trying to get everybody,
Speaker 6: the local, the state, the federal, and the indigenous people
Speaker 6: all on the same page to work together is tough.
Speaker 6: And when things change, because the climate change global warming,
Speaker 6: makes it even tougher.
Speaker 4: And uh. And so when it comes to voting, think
Speaker 4: about which representatives might give more of a darn about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it's it's it's it's always tough.
Speaker 6: But if you're looking at something as big as climate change, yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, find find the people who are who were
Speaker 6: going after it, and you know, try and get there.
Speaker 5: To get out there and and vote so maybe they
Speaker 5: can help do something.
Speaker 6: And you know, the the fire industry has has been
Speaker 6: undergoing a really big culture shift in the past so
Speaker 6: many years, and that's because of probably a lot of
Speaker 6: of you and and your listeners have noticed that you're
Speaker 6: starting to hear more and more about prescribed and controlled
Speaker 6: burns and forest thinning and indigenous or cultural burning, and
Speaker 6: that is because.
Speaker 5: We do need it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's definitely become a problem, especially here in California.
Speaker 6: We have some serious land management issues and a lot
Speaker 6: of there's reasons that we might get some of these
Speaker 6: mega fires or big fires is because there's such a
Speaker 6: build up of fuel or vegetation growth that these fires
Speaker 6: are just they're able to burn hotter, and they're consuming
Speaker 6: more and there's more energy to be released by them,
Speaker 6: so you get more actually fire behavior coupled with the
Speaker 6: wind events that are happening, and so cultural burns along
Speaker 6: with prescribed burns is kind of a way to kind
Speaker 6: of help manage the forest so that we take the
Speaker 6: process of burning in forest restoration and are able to
Speaker 6: bring it, I guess more in a sense of our control.
Speaker 6: So we would rather perform prescribed or cultural burns, which
Speaker 6: burn range land and forested area it's at a lower,
Speaker 6: more of a moderate intensity, so that they can regrow,
Speaker 6: so that wildlife can come back to areas, so that
Speaker 6: streams and rivers have a chance to reflow, so that
Speaker 6: fish can spawn, and all this sort of stuff. So
Speaker 6: we would rather have that, and we would rather be
Speaker 6: able to kind of help dictate where that is occurring
Speaker 6: than big build up and large fires happening that are
Speaker 6: very high intensity, because those are the ones that do
Speaker 6: more damage, and those are the ones we're trying to
Speaker 6: get away from. Indigenous and cultural burning is something we
Speaker 6: really want to do a lot more of because it's
Speaker 6: something that they'd been doing for a long time and
Speaker 6: have down themselves.
Speaker 5: And not only because preventing them from doing so can
Speaker 5: be culturally repressive, but the fact that they know what
Speaker 5: they're doing because they've been doing it for a while
Speaker 5: really helps. And there's a lot that can be learn
Speaker 5: from the way that they manage the forest and manage
Speaker 5: their lands in order to do the rest orate or practices.
Speaker 4: What if we just raked the forest like they do
Speaker 4: in Europe. Can't you just rake the forest, sweep up
Speaker 4: the forest.
Speaker 2: You gotta take care of the floors, you know, the
Speaker 2: floors of the forest very important.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, you can try. It can take all yeah,
Speaker 5: oh my god, well you know whatever, Like you just
Speaker 5: got to.
Speaker 4: Rake them raking the forest super simple, kind of just
Speaker 4: like maricondoing the linen closet. Clean it up. Shame on
Speaker 4: California for not sweeping the thirty three million acres of
Speaker 4: thick vegetation on forested lands PS the US is fifty
Speaker 4: six percent woods, according to the twenty sixteen Forest Inventory
Speaker 4: and Analysis Program of the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
Speaker 4: So grab those brooms, garbage bags. It's our fault. Actually,
Speaker 4: it kind of is. Since North American colonization and the
Speaker 4: gen side of indigenous people, ecosystems have suffered a bunch
Speaker 4: from the lack of indigenous fire stewardship also called cultural burning.
Speaker 4: And this is a huge, huge, rich topic historically currently
Speaker 4: which we're going to cover in a future Wildlife ecology episode.
Speaker 4: But for now you can seek out information like casey
Speaker 4: et has a series called Tending the Wild. They have
Speaker 4: a whole episode on cultural burning. I myself cannot wait
Speaker 4: to talk to an expert in this and hear about
Speaker 4: the heroes who are fighting for this repressed practice. Now,
Speaker 4: on the topic of that, Brook wants to know what
Speaker 4: kind of superpowers will I get when I am struck
Speaker 4: by lightning? What are we looking at?
Speaker 6: I don't condute it. I would say you're most likely
Speaker 6: not going to get them. Yeah, of course we see
Speaker 6: this in movies and stuff all the time. Yeah, hasn't
Speaker 6: stopped me from going out during lightning storms, get it?
Speaker 5: But I mean the flash lightning?
Speaker 6: Yeah, really fast, extremely i' metabolism and healing rate can
Speaker 6: throw bolts of lightning.
Speaker 4: Damn good deal. Any movies get lightning, right?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean, Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's every movie that you see that's about some
Speaker 6: sort of weather event or geologic event takes it to
Speaker 6: the most extreme you could ever you could ever imagine.
Speaker 5: So the scenario is that they paint in those movies.
Speaker 5: Are they realistic? No? But my favorite description of lightning
Speaker 5: is actually from the movie Frank and WEENI. I don't
Speaker 5: know if you ever saw that at the Disney movie
Speaker 5: Frank and Weenie and Familiar It's starts the beginning of
Speaker 5: the movie and the kids are in class and the
Speaker 5: teacher is describing how lightning works.
Speaker 4: Please enjoy this clip from Tim Burton's twenty twelve stop
Speaker 4: motion supernatural horror comedy film about a corpse dog.
Speaker 8: Lightning is simply electricity. The cloud is angry, yes, making strong.
Speaker 8: Only electrons are saying, I am leaving you. I go
Speaker 8: to the lend of opportunity. The ground says, yes, we
Speaker 8: need electrons trained and science just like you.
Speaker 4: Come, Come, welcome.
Speaker 2: So both sides start to build.
Speaker 6: The ladder, and the kids are just frightened the death
Speaker 6: of this because of the way.
Speaker 5: He's explaining it.
Speaker 6: But I really love the way that he describes it,
Speaker 6: in the way he describes the process of electrons trying
Speaker 6: to get back to the Motherland. Of all the movies,
Speaker 6: that's probably my favorite use of lightning is Frank and Winnie.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm putting it in.
Speaker 8: He does not see the invisible ladders one, the two
Speaker 8: ladders meet, boom, the scut is complete.
Speaker 4: Oh. Last listener question, John Worster, Irock, Ray, Hannaquist, Mikaylee Egot,
Speaker 4: and first time question asker Tiffany mus Alis want to
Speaker 4: know fact or flim flam lightning doesn't strike the same
Speaker 4: spot twice?
Speaker 5: Well, in general, it can strike.
Speaker 4: The same place twice, right, the lightning rots right?
Speaker 6: Depends on how small of the scale you want to get.
Speaker 6: I mean, when these when lightning strikes the ground, you know,
Speaker 6: you're talking about electrons and protons connecting things that are tiny.
Speaker 5: Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny tiny.
Speaker 6: So if you want to get down to the microscopic scale,
Speaker 6: maybe it doesn't strike the same place twice, but generally, yeah, it.
Speaker 5: Can strike the same place twice.
Speaker 6: Ah, Yeah, absolutely, I guess it's how you define the
Speaker 6: same place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, get into the little little, the tiny, tiny tiny details. Okay,
Speaker 4: questions I always ask again, what sucks the most about lightning?
Speaker 4: What do you hate the most about your job? Just
Speaker 4: what's like that?
Speaker 5: It would probably be trying to trying to get.
Speaker 6: People realize that the research we're doing with lightning is
Speaker 6: more important than the other research out there and meteorology
Speaker 6: and fire weather in order to get the funding for it,
Speaker 6: because it's not easy.
Speaker 5: So of course, everything science comes down to how much
Speaker 5: money can you get for it? Yeah, can you do
Speaker 5: the research itself?
Speaker 4: What is your favorite thing about your work or about
Speaker 4: lightning or what keeps you just gives you butterflies?
Speaker 6: I would have to say just the fascination of it,
Speaker 6: The fascination of trying to understand lightning in itself, trying
Speaker 6: to get out there and do the research. Knowing that
Speaker 6: there's so many any questions to be answered and seeing
Speaker 6: lightning happen and knowing that at some point we can
Speaker 6: contribute something to this knowledge base is very exciting in itself,
Speaker 6: and the fact that we're not there yet and the
Speaker 6: fact that there is more to do. I mean right now,
Speaker 6: we're at a point where our models can get better,
Speaker 6: they can always get better, and so knowing that they
Speaker 6: can always get better and we don't have things nailed
Speaker 6: down specifically, and seeing how things are constantly changing and
Speaker 6: seeing how it's impacting society is a big motivational factor
Speaker 6: because we know what's at risk, we know what changes
Speaker 6: might be coming about, we know that they may not
Speaker 6: be good, and so we have a real opportunity to
Speaker 6: do something. We have a real opportunity to to help
Speaker 6: an industry seek some sort of answers, get out there
Speaker 6: and look at fire tornadoes and fire world.
Speaker 5: We get to see lightning storms shoot down from the sky.
Speaker 6: We get to go out there during some of these
Speaker 6: storm events, which I know told people you shouldn't do,
Speaker 6: but we go out there during some of these storm
Speaker 6: events and just blow right through them, you know, and
Speaker 6: just get inundated with the rain and you know, and how.
Speaker 5: These storms come.
Speaker 10: Uh So, so that in itself, even though that is
Speaker 10: a very small portion of what we're actually doing, because
Speaker 10: a lot of it is sitting down and analyzing shit,
Speaker 10: it's those little bits in that field work that's extremely,
Speaker 10: extremely exciting.
Speaker 5: Mm hm.
Speaker 4: That's part of kind of what got you into it,
Speaker 4: I'm sure.
Speaker 5: Right, oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: I mean, what is more exciting than something that is
Speaker 4: one point one jigawatts one point one yeah, how many whatever?
Speaker 4: Sorry jig hotter than the sun? Seemingly random, but science
Speaker 4: can explain it. I mean, that's like, what's more exciting
Speaker 4: than like bolts of electricity coming from the heavens. That's
Speaker 4: rat oh I know, right, yeah, it's super rad. I mean,
Speaker 4: you're my favorite folmonologist. You are the only fomonologist I know.
Speaker 4: But you are my favorite legitimately appreciate that. So ask
Speaker 4: smart people stupid questions because it might spark some great ideas. Also,
Speaker 4: someone just throw a dumb truck full of money at
Speaker 4: Climate and Fire Research if you don't mind. Thank you
Speaker 4: so much. Also, you can follow Chris on Twitter at
Speaker 4: see Gezag thirty nine or Instagram at Chris gisege and
Speaker 4: he says, if you can spell my name right, then
Speaker 4: you deserve to follow me. And it's in the title, folks. Plus,
Speaker 4: links to his social media are in the show notes.
Speaker 4: You can also follow ologies at ologies on Twitter and
Speaker 4: on Instagram. Please do I'm on both. Also at ali
Speaker 4: Ward with one L on Everything and more notes are
Speaker 4: at aliward dot com slash ologies slash Fulminology. That link
Speaker 4: is also in the show notes, as is a link
Speaker 4: to ologies merch dot com, which sells t shirts for
Speaker 4: twenty bucks. We keep them affordable because I just really
Speaker 4: love to see y'all wearing him in the wild, making
Speaker 4: new ologies friends. You can tag photos with Ologies merch
Speaker 4: on Instagram and we repost you. Shannon Feltis and Bonnie
Speaker 4: Dutch of the comedy podcast You Are That manage all
Speaker 4: the merch. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the Facebook
Speaker 4: group of over fifteen thousand peaceful kind spart people and
Speaker 4: Hello ologies redditors to thank you to everyone on patreon
Speaker 4: dot com slash ologies for literally funding the show and
Speaker 4: submit such good questions. Thank you to Emily White and
Speaker 4: the group of transcribers for getting all these episodes transcribed
Speaker 4: for our deaf and heart of hearing pals. Those are
Speaker 4: up for free for anyone who wants transcripts at Alleyward
Speaker 4: dot com slash Ologies dash Extras, alongside a bunch of
Speaker 4: bleeped episodes you can download if you have kiddos or
Speaker 4: classes to teach. Thank you to Caleb Patten for bleeping
Speaker 4: and thank you to Noel Dilworth for helping me schedule interviews.
Speaker 4: Thank you to assistant editor Shared Sleeper who cuts out
Speaker 4: all my oms but not mysswears, and of course to
Speaker 4: the Pod of Thunder Stephen ray Thoris, who also hosts
Speaker 4: the per cast about kiddies and see Jurassic Right, which
Speaker 4: is about dinosaurs, two fine programs. Nick Thorbern wrote and
Speaker 4: performed the theme music and if you stick it out
Speaker 4: through the credits, I divulge a secret of some sort
Speaker 4: and this week's secret as My favorite lightning storm ever
Speaker 4: was once in high school, my sister Janelle and I
Speaker 4: sat at the window in the living room and we
Speaker 4: just watched these wicked bulls bolz dash across the sky
Speaker 4: like for I think a few hours, just listening to Enya,
Speaker 4: just in silence, listening to Enya on a boombox.
Speaker 5: It was so rad.
Speaker 4: Okay, enjoy the thunder and the lightning. Duck for cover.
Speaker 4: And hey, remember, if Roy Sullivan can live through seven
Speaker 4: lightning strikes, you can cut banks, you can text your crush,
Speaker 4: start your novel. We're all going to be bones anyway,
Speaker 4: but then our bones will become plants and frogs and rocks,
Speaker 4: which is pretty dope. Okay, wear a mask, be cool
Speaker 4: to each other for bye. Hacadermatology, hombiology, r doo, zoology, lithology, Yeah, namnology, meteorology, pertology, nathology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 2: Ryan started the fire.
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