A spate of lightning strikes across southern Ontario is prompting officials to warn that remaining outside during a thunderstorm can be fatal.
New safety guidelines suggest that thunderous rumblings ought to cue people to take shelter immediately, said Geoff Coulson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.
"If you hear a rumble, get inside," he told ctvtoronto.ca. "There is nowhere safe outside."
"Every thunderstorm has lightning associated with it and lightning can be deadly."
The warning follows the death of 25-year-old man who was struck by lightning while being pulled in an inner tube on the Grand River near Brantford, Ont. Saturday evening.
A couple in Montreal was badly injured over the weekend when lightning hit a tree under which they were taking shelter during a storm.
And early Monday morning, a lightning strike set the roof of a Markham, Ont. home on fire. The family sleeping inside escaped the blaze without injury.
New safety guidelines replace previous suggestions that people try to calculate their distance from a storm based on the time that elapses between a rumble of thunder and a crack of lightning, Coulson said.
Each year up to 12 Canadians are killed by lightning strikes while between 100 and 150 are injured by strikes, he said.
"These guidelines are to explain to people, rather than have them out there counting...," he said.
Lightning doesn't discriminate from one point of touchdown to the next, but will gravitate toward the highest point of elevation, he said.
"Lightning is looking for the shortest distance between base of cloud and the ground. It doesn't have to be metal. Hilltops get hit by lightning, chimneys, trees -- none of these things are made of metal, but they are things you want to avoid during a lightning storm," he said.
If going indoors is not possible, taking shelter in a vehicle with a metal top is the second best option.
"It's the metal cage that surrounds you in a vehicle that protects you, not the rubber tires," Coulson said.
Marianne Donovan believes she was hit by lightning twice last week while sitting metres from her 8th floor balcony which has a metal railing.
Donovan was on metal chair on July 15, editing an essay on her computer, when an enormous ‘boom' and bright flash rattled her apartment.
Donovan, who has lived in the Peterborough apartment for 13 years, was baffled by the prospect of the apartment being hit by lightning because it was not raining and the thunder she heard in the distance was not loud enough to concern her, she said.
"I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, lightning hit my balcony and I got some of the offshoot of it.'
"I chalked it up to a strange occurrence."
A few minutes later, while Donovan was talking on the phone, a second ‘boom' shook the apartment -- this time causing her arm to shake.
"I was probably six feet from my open balcony door, the screen door was shut, the railings for the balcony are metal…," she said.
While Donovan did not see rain, lightning remains a danger for up to 30 minutes after a storm because it can travel up to 20 kilometres out the back of a storm, Coulson said.
Thunderstorm activity is expected throughout southern Ontario on Tuesday, he said.
Donovan is still trying to reconcile the fact that she was struck.
"Bizarre. I never in a million years would have thought I would get struck by lightning in my apartment. It still didn't rain and those were the only two thunder boomers," she said.
"I used to love watching thunderstorms."
