Lightning safety while camping and hiking

1. Go to your vehicle or a building now. The NWS uses this exact scenario: thunder while you cook, with your tent and an open picnic shelter nearby and your car a quarter mile away. The answer is the car, because the tent and shelter are not safe. A vehicle needs a hard metal top to protect you.
2. Stay there 30 minutes after the last rumble of thunder before going back to camp.
3. Don’t wait for rain. NOAA says almost all lightning occurs within 10 miles of its storm, and it can strike much farther away.

The NWS backcountry guidance, written with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), lists four actions in order of importance. None makes you as safe as a building or a metal-topped vehicle.

1. Time your trip to the weather. Learn when storms usually build where you are going, set turnaround times that get you off exposed terrain first, and begin turning around when you hear thunder.
2. Move to safer terrain as soon as you hear thunder. Leave peaks, ridges and higher ground. If you can choose, descend the side without clouds over it.
3. Avoid tall trees and long conductors once lightning gets close. Stay away from isolated tall trees, trees that rise above the rest, fences and wet ropes. Look for a ravine or depression, and spread your group about 20 feet (7 m) apart so one strike cannot injure everyone.
4. Take the lightning position if strikes are close: crouch into a tight ball as low as you can with your feet close together. Do not lie flat; the NWS says that increases the risk from ground current.

Ground current, which spreads through the ground from a strike, causes about half of lightning injuries, according to the same guidance, which is why keeping your feet together and not lying down matter.

• Camp low if you are in open country. The NWS says to set up in a valley, ravine or other low area if you are camping in an open area.
• Stay away from tall, isolated trees, and do not pitch on a ridge, a summit or in a broad open meadow.
• Watch for flash floods in low spots. NOLS notes it has had more serious near misses with flash floods in dry camps than with lightning, so a low site should not be a dry wash.
• Have a storm plan before dark. NOLS advises that if your tent is on exposed ground you need to leave it for safer terrain before the storm hits; agree on a meeting spot and keep rain gear and a headlamp within reach.

A good rain shell matters while you wait out a storm; see our Torrentshell vs Foray comparison.

1. Call 911 or send for help.
2. Make sure the scene is safe. The NWS backcountry guidance says it may be safer to wait for the storm to pass before treating victims in extremely hazardous spots.
3. Treat the people who are not breathing or have no pulse first. Unlike normal triage, lightning guidance says to attend first to anyone in cardiac or respiratory arrest without an obviously fatal injury, and to be ready for prolonged rescue breathing.
4. Check everyone, including for hidden burns and head, spine and limb injuries, and evacuate anyone injured. Survivors may be confused and should not be left to make decisions alone.

The NWS notes lightning mainly injures the nervous system; survivors who seem fine can have headaches, confusion, dizziness and memory problems afterward, so get them checked.

• Sheltering in the tent or under a picnic pavilion. Neither protects you.
• Standing under a lone tree. Side flash jumps from struck trees to people nearby.
• Huddling together. Spread out so others can help.
• Going back out too soon. Wait 30 minutes after the last thunder.
• Ignoring the afternoon pattern. NOAA notes that in central Florida more than 90% of lightning comes between May and October, between noon and midnight, and campers there are among those most likely to be struck.