Back in the spring of 2002, I attended a seminar on Lightning Safety conducted by the Chief Engineer of the National Lightning Safety Center (Link #2 above) If I remember right, most lightning strike victims are Golfers, and most world-wide victims are struck "out of a clear blue sky" There's a guy in the San Francisco Bay area that's been struck twice while fishing from his aluminum boat on San Francisco Bay- not usually thought of as a lightning-prone area.

The seminar was two hours, and many of the attendees hung out for most of an hour afterwards asking questions. All decided that the seminar should be Two Days, not two hours.

If you live in lightning country, and fish, kayak, canoe, boat, golf or climb mountains or trees, you can Never know enough about lightning.

Small, hand-held lightning detectors are available-they aren't reliable in estimating their distance from lightning strikes, but they are very reliable early warning devices that can assist you in getting out of compromising situations before that "clear blue sky" sneaks up on you!