Thunderstorms

Abstract

THE prevalence of thunderstorms accompanied by serious accidents during the last two months has led me and many others to consider whether the phenomena of electrical discharges are thoroughly understood. We have heard of several instances in which the electric fluid “came down the chimney, filled a room with sulphurous vapour,” and terrified or injured persons sitting near the fire-places. One fatal accident took place within a few hundred yards of my own house. A gentleman's coachman driving along the turnpike road was instantaneously killed on his box, “the lightning,” it is said, “having struck him on the head and passed through his body to the iron work of the carriage, and thence to the ground.” From the appearance of the body there is no doubt that the fluid did pass through the poor fellow and caused his death, but my opinion is that he was killed by an ascending current which was attracted to the wheels of the carriage, passed upwards through his body, issued at his head, and shivering his hat (made of felt, and therefore a bad conductor) to fragments, passed to the cloud above. During the same storm I was watching the lightning playing on the hill which is separated by a valley from my house. Every flash I observed was double, composed I imagine of an ascending and descending current. In every instance one of the two flashes was brighter than the other; but I could detect no difference of time; as fir as the eye could judge they were simultaneous. The inference I am disposed to draw from these facts is this, that during thunderstorms ascending currents are to be guarded against no less than descending ones; that when chimney-pieces are shivered and people sitting by the fire side are killed, the electric fluid has not come down the chimney at all, but has proceeded from the earth, and, having found a good conductor in the fender and grate, has passed through them harmlessly, and has then overflowed, so to say, into the room, or shattered the non-conduciing masonry. Continuous lightning-conductors, on Sir Snow Haris's principle, afford sufficient protection to public buildings, but metal pinnacles terminating below in masonry or woodwork are likely to cause mischief, and iron pillars, unless insulated below by some non-conducting substance, must be equally objectionable.