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Lightning

Idrops

Idrops

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Was playing a local course this afternoon when a small storm rolled in. Was on the sixth hole when it started to shower. Pulled out my iPhone and saw a small cell on the Doppler radar. We covered up and waited a bit. After it let up we started to play and out of nowhere there was a huge crack of lightening that scared the tees outta my pants. It seemed to be right over my head. Well, we packed it up and headed for the clubhouse and another strike hit very close by. Another golfer in the clubhouse said it struck near the thirteenth hole. There was another fellow that looked very pale. He was visibly shaken and scared to death.

I'm not sure if it would have been more appropriate to seek the lowest ground and stay in the cart or to hook it back to the clubhouse like we did.

Anyone else have a scare like this? What did you do?
 
Lightning means thunder. When I hear thunder, I head for cover.
 
In Florida too. It happen on the 18th for us in Tampa. The clouds rolled & the lightning began. They were so close we just left the balls and hauled a$$ out of there.
 
Never been that close on a golf course, but have had a lightning slam into a lightpost 20 or so yards in front of me. I turned and ran into a nearby building without a second thought.

Tricky thing if you´re out on a course with no shelter available. Lowest ground would´t work (well it might be better than nothing, but not completely safe), because the shower(water on the gruond) might work as a conductor. There are multiple reports of soccerplayers injured and even killed because om lightning striking the wet pitch. In your case I would recommend you haul ass back to the club house or other building in your golf cart(if you had one). The cart in it self protects you a bit like a car - BUT with its open sides its not completely safe.
 
I usually play until the darker clouds are completely over top and then I make my way to cover..

I have been in a gazebo when a lightning bolt hit a tree just beside it... Was the craziest thing I've ever been around.. All I heard was a loud *TICK *TICK like you hear when someone static shocks you but really loud, then a mess of flash/BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

Crazy stuff.
 
I will play golf in any weather, but I DO NOT mess around with lightning. No thanks. Head for shelter, as fast as you can.
 
Yeah two years ago on 12 it happened to us. Not a single thing of rain or thunder. Was overcast, but most summer afternoons are. We're all practice swinging getting ready to hit a short par 3 that's over water and "crack". The bolt hit about 25 feet from us. We all hit the deck. The feeling was very weird. We got up like "WTF?" and noticed people much further away then us from the bolt were in their carts racing back to the clubhouse except one cart headed towards us that thought we were dead and were coming to check us out. They're the ones that saw it and confirmed what we knew, from our still tingling bodies, that the bolt hit that close to us. In the clubhouse everyone was talking to us cause we were "that" group that the bolt hit by. Lot of people said we were lucky.

Oh, and I wanted to keep playing. Everyone wanted to go to clubhouse so we called it a day. They were probably right, but to me it was just a freak occurrence.
 
This actually happened to me about a month ago...

Our foursome had been playing in some light-decent rain for about 5 holes, and passed shelter twice. There's a halfway house by 10 and 12, and we decided to pass that as well, but not without some reluctance from myself and my partner (we had been hearing thunder for the past hole and half). Anyway we get out to 10 green, and all the sudden we see lightning that look about a half mile out. All I heard was...

"Alright that's it, I'm not dying because he's down 10 bucks and wants to make his money back"

We hurried over to the halfway house.
 
happened to me last year!

Playing with my buddy and on the 3th tee out of no where starts showering like no tomorrow, so we pulled out our umbrellas and were hoping to wait it out.

Then came the blinding lightening that scared us to death.

Very scary, here we are, surrounded by trees, holding golf clubs made of one the best conducting materials, umbrellas, and we thought we were going to die.

We booked it out of there, left our clubs and found the nearest shelter.


It is no joke, protect yourselves and never play in thunderstorm weather. Golf has the highest death rates from lightening deaths.

Don't go underneath trees, try to find low lying areas and not be in an open area. The best thing to find is SEEK SHELTER! There is no better advice than that. Run to shelter, golf carts are not where you want to be in a lightning storm.
But if that's impossible, crouch down as low as you can with your feet together and hands on your knees trying to touch as little of the ground as possible.

This might sound ridiculous but it really is a serious threat, hundreds die each year getting struck playing golf...


http://golf.about.com/cs/golffitness/ht/lightningsafety.htm
 
I've only been scared of it on a course once, on a course outside of Vegas a few years ago. But twice I've been on the lake with no where to go when a storm rumbled in and had to hunker down waiting it through. Both times I was shocked, or saw an arc flash from my rod to mt hands, that popped out loud and scared the crap out of me.

Its simply not worth sticking it out, but in the middle of a lake and 20 miles to the dock you do what you can.
 
I've been in two lightening situations and it's no joke.
On the 9th at Bayhill two guys I was caddying for hid under a tree to get out of the rain. I told them to head in as I was heading to the caddy shake behind the starter shack. No sooner did those words flow from my lips than a bolt struck very close to the tree they were under. The hair on my arms stood up and the guys were shaken. We laughed about once the storm passed but it wasn't funny at the time.


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Been close enough once that our hair was standing on end from the electricity around us. The two of us were at the farthest point from the clubhouse, with no weather shelter on what was then a relatively new course. We parked our bags in the middle of the fairway and found a depression about 40 yards away. We just crouched down as low as possible under our umbrellas and waited it out. We were walking and carrying and there really wasn't any other choice. That's about the most scared I've ever been. I've even been through thunderstorms above tree line in the mountains that weren't as frightening as that one.

For Duey and the guys who played in the Colorado get together this year, that was at Riverdale Dunes, 15th hole, about 20 years ago.
 
Grab a 1 iron not even god can hit a 1 iron (Lee Trevino I believe)

Happened to me once, like you guys above it scared the bejesus out of me,best leg it and retrieve the sticks at a later safer time.
 
Fourputt said:
Been close enough once that our hair was standing on end from the electricity around us. The two of us were at the farthest point from the clubhouse, with no weather shelter on what was then a relatively new course. We parked our bags in the middle of the fairway and found a depression about 40 yards away. We just crouched down as low as possible under our umbrellas and waited it out. We were walking and carrying and there really wasn't any other choice. That's about the most scared I've ever been. I've even been through thunderstorms above tree line in the mountains that weren't as frightening as that one.

For Duey and the guys who played in the Colorado get together this year, that was at Riverdale Dunes, 15th hole, about 20 years ago.
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Sounds like a "kiss your own a#$ and hope" moment, lol. I know how you felt with your hair sticking out and crackling. On the lake I thought about firing up the outbound to make a big run for it, but 15 gallons of gas under my seat and 3 foot wakes kind of kept me grounded, lol.

We going to hit that course again before you leave the country?

Tap,Tap,Tap
 
thedue said:
Sounds like a "kiss your own a#$ and hope" moment, lol. I know how you felt with your hair sticking out and crackling. On the lake I thought about firing up the outbound to make a big run for it, but 15 gallons of gas under my seat and 3 foot wakes kind of kept me grounded, lol.

We going to hit that course again before you leave the country?

Tap,Tap,Tap
Click to expand...

Would love to anytime you feel like making the drive down. I'd take you to my home course too, not that it's super impressive, just a fun course to play.
 
I think we average at least one golfer death per year in colorado via lightning. I am a wussy but it always seems the guys in league I play with never head in. So, sometimes I finish, most times I don't. You can't mess with lightning in my opinion. It has no bias.
 
i had my first terrifying experience with lighting on the course yesterday. On the 15th tee, my group noticed how dark the skies were ahead and we could hear some thunder in distance. Either way we teed off then jumped in our carts to pursue our second shots. During the short trip from teebox to fairway, the rain started to downpour and wind was swirling like crazy...

So i pulled off onto the side next to some shrubs/small bushes. After waiting for the rain to pass for a few minutes, i was just glancing around when all of a sudden, i saw a massive white flash beside us. The flash and the immense BOOM noise were simultaneous and probably 50-100 yards away. I had never felt such a fierce power and am still stunned to be as lucky as i am today. After that terrifying experience, we booked it back to the clubhouse and left.

Should i catch myself in a lighting storm again, i will have no second thoughts as to take shelter ASAP. What is the best protocol to take when trapped within a lightning storm on the golf course? Is it best to just book it in your golf cart across the open areas to get to the clubhouse? Or is it best to stay in a low area until the storm has passed???
 
alb0t16 said:
i had my first terrifying experience with lighting on the course yesterday. On the 15th tee, my group noticed how dark the skies were ahead and we could hear some thunder in distance. Either way we teed off then jumped in our carts to pursue our second shots. During the short trip from teebox to fairway, the rain started to downpour and wind was swirling like crazy...

So i pulled off onto the side next to some shrubs/small bushes. After waiting for the rain to pass for a few minutes, i was just glancing around when all of a sudden, i saw a massive white flash beside us. The flash and the immense BOOM noise were simultaneous and probably 50-100 yards away. I had never felt such a fierce power and am still stunned to be as lucky as i am today. After that terrifying experience, we booked it back to the clubhouse and left.

Should i catch myself in a lighting storm again, i will have no second thoughts as to take shelter ASAP. What is the best protocol to take when trapped within a lightning storm on the golf course? Is it best to just book it in your golf cart across the open areas to get to the clubhouse? Or is it best to stay in a low area until the storm has passed???
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Get the heck out of there, don't be a sitting target.
 
This reminds me of a video that I saw on YouTube when lighting hit a tree during a televised golf tournament sending fragments of tree parts everywhere.
 
angryyankee said:
This reminds me of a video that I saw on YouTube when lighting hit a tree during a televised golf tournament sending fragments of tree parts everywhere.
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[video=youtube;2D-RXplPCvU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D-RXplPCvU[/video]
 
shewythemuss said:
Grab a 1 iron not even god can hit a 1 iron (Lee Trevino I believe)

Happened to me once, like you guys above it scared the bejesus out of me,best leg it and retrieve the sticks at a later safer time.
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Except Lee Trevino was later struck by lightning and admits he was a complete moron.
 
A big thing to keep in mind is that lightning can jump 30 or 40 miles. So, "it's way over there," doesn't mean diddly-squat.
 
^^^ yikes

all too often down here in the rainy season and the afternoon boomers... glad they have the sirens around everywhere. I've been out on the course and they didn't go off which is a bit scary. Plus the local county course I love to play is up on top of an old trash mound and west with all the big boomer storms; so probably the highest peak in south florida. :-/
 
wadesworld said:
A big thing to keep in mind is that lightning can jump 30 or 40 miles. So, "it's way over there," doesn't mean diddly-squat.
Click to expand...

Yeah no doubt. My mom had a close call not too long ago actually. Same scenario there was nothing remotely in the area, then BAM it was feet from her. Scared the absolute crap outa her she talks about it every time we bring up lightning haha. Its a scary thought tho, lightening is no joke. Gotta take precautions
 
Never a good idea to walk around an open field with a metal object in your hands. Head for cover when lightning is involved.
 
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