flood waters
Don’t go paddling in flood waters anywhere you wouldn’t go swimming because you just might. You can’t tell if there’s something an inch under the water unlike normal lakes rivers. A steel fence post an inch under the water can really mess with you paddling day.
Bill H.
yeah freezing rain pretty much bites
I’ll take low winter temperatures over freezing rain. The cold and damp combo kind of chills you to the bone. Great time to stay inside and impart wisdom (or b.s.) on the pnet forums.
sound advice for all situations
– Last Updated: Jun-08-16 2:53 PM EST –
why would you want to paddle somewhere where you believe swimming is likely to have dire consequences? I go lots of places where swimming would be unpleasant- scraped or banged up a bit and even a bit worn out swimming to shore, but I never paddle anything where I believe the consequences are so profound that my life is at risk.
Hair boaters stake their life on their belief and confidence that "they can hit the line", meet the challenge, possess the skills to not swim at all or suffer potentially serious consequences.
In Arizona…
temp today was only 99. Wed it is expected to be 104.
Phoenix lakes are 10 degrees hotter than Tucson so when I go paddling, I like it to be overcast to cool things down.
I keep a rain poncho in my rear deck-bag just in case and have hunkered down under my poncho during a monsoon storm.
You just wait it out, then paddle on.
And no, I am not concerned about lightening. I figure that they will strike the mountain or trees around the lake before they hit me.
I know, stupid thought. Lightening looks for stupid people like me who are the highest thing on the lake at 24" when there is a 3000’ mountain right there or a bunch of trees and saguaro cacti around
Lightning
– Last Updated: Jun-08-16 6:37 PM EST –
Lightning presents a very small risk, but I wouldn't recommend being this complacent. I don't recall the exact details, but tall objects provide relative protection for shorter objects that are within a cone-shaped area, with the point of the cone being the top of the tall object. I seem to recall that the approximate angle from vertical of the outside surface of the cone is around 45 degrees, which if true, makes it easy to visualize how far away that zone of relative protection extends. In that case, for a 50-foot-tall object, you'd better be less than 50 feet away (and inside of this distance you are likely to get zapped by surface currents anyway). And for that 3000-foot-tall mountain, I'm assuming you aren't at sea level when nearby, so let's say you are at half that elevation. That means you are only protected to a horizontal distance of 1500 feet from the peak, and the base of the mountain is probably much farther away from the peak than that, which of course means that the mountain is accomplishing zilch in the way of lighting protection. If you are paddling on narrow rivers within very steep-sided valleys, your logic makes pretty good sense. If in more typical terrain, it doesn't.
Edit: A really quick online search revealed a bunch of sites saying that there's fairly good protection within a cone whose sides are 30 degrees from vertical, and that means you have to be roughly within a horizontal distance of two-thirds of that indicated above (such as 20 feet away from a 30-foot saguaro cactus, right where ground currents will probably kill you anyway if the cactus is struck). Protection outside of the 30-degree cone and inside of the 45-degree cone is much less. And none of this information is absolutely reliable, but at least it's clear that the mountain on the shore of the lake, or the trees and cacti there, don't provide any protection at all.
Less fun if wearing glasses - NM
Flamingo
Florida Bay, Keys…
come on down …
sorry that is hooey
– Last Updated: Jun-10-16 7:53 AM EST –
http://lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/cone-of-protection-myth.html
And watch what you touch. Two kayaking friends took shelter in an old fort. They were killed. Lightning hit the concrete and traveled along the rebar inside.
Same goes for tree roots. I heard of an electrocution on the Allagash from that.
Even inside is not safe always. I remember an EMS call where lightning struck a tree by a lake and the cabin the tree was over had some wiring that transmitted the charge. Campers inside were on cots. One was directly on the metal springs and got second degree burns on his back.
It’s all a matter of probability…
– Last Updated: Jun-10-16 9:11 AM EST –
... and minds greater than mine or yours have figured out that lightning is a whole lot less likely to directly hit the ground in close proximity to something that's very tall. Honestly, in a storm, would you feel just as safe perched on the highest spot around as you would at the bottom of a deep, steep-sided valley? It seems as if that's what you are saying when being so quick to ignore the various qualifying statements that I made, along with the idea that it's all a matter of probability, *not* either/or situations.
I think the most important thing to note is that I used the "cone of protection" idea to shoot down the logic of the poster I was replying to. He said that tall objects provided protection for an area much more huge than is actually the case, so I explained just how small that area of "protection" actually is. Further, at no point did I say that lightning could not strike inside that cone (that's where probability comes in), and I did not in any way imply that a person would be safe if inside that cone area. That's why I specifically said that a person would likely get zapped by ground currents if he WERE inside that cone area and the tall object were struck. I think it was really clear that I was NOT saying that the cone-of-protection is really "protection". It was just a statement regarding a tall object's physical affect on the immediate surroundings.
If you were to read my post again, I think you'd decide that we really don't disagree at all. My point was to illustrate the flaw in reasoning being used by the poster I was responding to, and by ignoring my qualifying statements in order to create a tone of "absoluteness" and ideas that are contrary to what I actually stated, it could almost seem as if you are letting the other poster off the hook.
I might have read it too fast
we have very sporadic internet service and its going to be that way for a long time
I was a registered Maine Guide. There was an exam. If we said there was a cone of protection we automatically flunked.
gotta go canoeing bye.
Okay, cool.
Have fun paddling.
high stuff doesn’t protect you
I had posted the link to this photo last month:
https://www.facebook.com/DaveDiCelloPhotography/photos/a.169352436435191.28896.109169899120112/1001868753183551/?type=3&theater
The all-steel skyscraper whose top deck is obscured by clouds at the left of the cityscape is 841’ tall. If you zoom in on the high resolution image, you can see that the lightning bolts are hitting the surface of the Monongahela River, exactly where we usually raft up our kayaks to watch the 4th of July fireworks. I suspect that at least one bolt was attracted to the drowned pier of a bridge that was removed many decades ago.
uh
the cone idea is ok IF ! the cone is grounded for sending the charge up and away or down into the ground.
There are cones, and I know one, attracting the charge then distributing to adjacent objects for actual grounding either up or down.
The action here is under the potential cone but not near it, not proximal. What does this mean measurement wise ? I’ll look. Then edit.
If you’re in lighting country eg hiking at altitude, carrying a foam sleeping pad to lay on is advised.
Poss an example: if a charge is on boulder A, charge will distribute around A then possibly not find enough ‘grounding’ then shooting off to Boulder B…
If you were in A’s cone…at a distance X* …but on the ground then maybe the charge would pass overhead.
If you were not on the pad…
I have never been and if chosen will refuse a Maine guide license…
but have direct experience with lightning.
BTW, Florida has 7 rip tide drowning so far this year.
Reiterating
– Last Updated: Jun-10-16 2:00 PM EST –
Kim missed this due simply to reading in a hurry, and now you have, so before the next person comes along who has done the same, I'll clarify what I wrote.
I never said high stuff protects you - far from it. High stuff *would* offer fairly good protection if its cone of influence were as incredibly huge as believed by the poster I replied to. The fact that the cone is as small as it is means that if you are within that zone you'll likely get fried by scattered currents even if you are not hit directly (and I said as much the first time). Also, the area within the cone is a zone of "relative" protection from direct strikes, but they can and do still happen (and I meant for that to be obvious from the wording I used, even if I didn't spell it out).
Oh by the way, I looked at that photo, and it's clear that the lightning struck a very long distance *outside* of the zone of "relative protection" around that tall building, so this doesn't even apply to what I wrote. The zone of relative protection in this case would be less than 500 feet from the base of the building (488 feet if you feel like applying greater significance to the numbers than can be justified), and the distance shown is a whole lot greater than that. Clearly there'd be no reason to expect any effect from the tower on lightning striking at the location shown.
and people are struck and killed…
… by a bolt of lightening that came from a clear cloudless sky with no idea of where that bolt originated.
It is all a crap shoot and we all play the odds.
Just because I survived playing Russian Roulette does not make is safe and just because some guy on a pier got killed while on a pier in a clear sky does not make it dangerous.
you calculate the odds and take your chance and hope that you are right.
Still, I do enjoy going out under rainclouds because it is cooler and I have hunkered down in the middle of a lake under my poncho and hunkered down under a tree by the shore and see no reason to give up paddling during the summer because I WILL get wet and MIGHT be struck by a lightening bolt.
I figure that I am safer in a lightening storm that drove all the stink-pots to shore than on a clear day when the water is filled with speedboats and jet skis who are more interested in speed and fun that looking for my 12’ piece of plastic.