SURGERY POSTPONED ... AND LIGHTNING

SEVERAL OF YOU HAVE INQUIRED AS TO MY SURGERY THAT I SHOULD HAVE HAD YESTERDAY.

THANK YOU FOR CARING.
I DEEPLY APPRECIATE THE COMMENTS AND CONCERN.

SURGERY HAS BEEN POSTPONED SO THAT WE CAN RESOLVE SOME PULMONARY ISSUES, ATTAIN A BETTER LUNG FUNCTION AND DETERMINE ANEW THE ABILITY OF MY AGING HEART TO RECOVER NICELY ONCE THE SPLEEN IS REMOVED.

AFTER SUCH SURGERY, MANY, ACTUALLY MOST I'M TOLD, HAVE A SHORT BOUT OF PNEUMONIA, SO ANY PULMONARY WEAKNESS MUST BE DEALT WITH PRIOR TO O.R.

CT SCAN AT PRE-OP LAST TUESDAY DETERMINED THE NEED FOR A LITTLE WORK IN THE DIRECTION OF SOME SHORT-TERM TREATMENTS TO BETTER MY SURVIVAL ODDS.

THE VERY GOOD NEWS FROM ALL THAT PRE-OP IS THAT NONE OF THE 3 MASSES HAVE GROWN BY EVEN A FRACTION OF A CENTIMETER, WHICH TELLS US, HAPPILY, THAT WHATEVER IS IN THERE IS NOT "AGGRESSIVE".

AGAIN, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR INQUIRING, THOSE WHO DID, AND BE ASSURED OUR COMMUNICATION WILL BE KEPT OUT OF THE COMMENTS SECTION.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO "CZ" WHOSE OFFBEAT HUMOR HAS MADE ME SMILE AND LAUGH ALOUD.

I PROMISE TO UPDATE WHEN A NEW SURGERY DATE IS SET.

ALL THE BEST, FELLOW EARTHLINGS.
I HOPE YOU ALL ARE WELL.

_______

NOW, ABOUT THAT LIGHTNING....

[Ground-to-cloud lightning, slow-motion camera]

I READ WITH CONCERN THAT MANY IN EUROPE AND INDIA HAVE RECENTLY BEEN KILLED BY LIGHTNING STRIKE.

AS WE GO INTO OUR 'LONG HOLIDAY WEEKEND' HERE IN AMERICA (MEMORIAL DAY), SOME CAUTIONARY NOTES REGARDING LIGHTNING (and some very fantastic photos/videos) SO THAT YOU WILL ALL BE, PERHAPS, MORE AWARE OF THE HAZARDS AS SUMMER APPROACHES, BRINGING MORE SUCH FIERCE STORMS.

I LOST 3 COUSINS TO LIGHTNING STRIKE, 2 WERE BROTHERS  WHO WERE STRUCK ATOP A HAY WAGON MANY YEARS AGO. THEIR SURVIVING BROTHER WAS SEVERELY AFFECTED BY THE BOLT FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE, AND THE 3RD COUSIN WAS A GIRL OF 7 YEARS OLD PLAYING OUTSIDE AS A THUNDERSTORM APPROACHED IN THE DISTANCE.
THE BOLT WHICH KILLED HER CAME FROM MILES AWAY.
MAY THIS HELP KEEP ALL OF YOU JUST A BIT SAFER.

~ MYTH: 'Don't worry, lightning never strikes twice'

YES, IT DOES!

Unfortunately for anyone whose house had been struck by lightning (or who uses this expression to suggest a negative event is unlikely to re-occur) the exact opposite is true.

Some areas and places are simply more prone to being hit by lightning.
"The geographic conditions that lead to the storm coming through and causing lightning are fixed — the mountains are there, the buildings are there," says Dr Karl Kruszelnicki.

"So, you're more likely to have lightning hit the same place more than once."
ABC weatherman Graham Creed agrees.

~ Lightning can occur 'out of the blue'

The concept of a shocking 'bolt from the blue' is based on reality.

Lightning CAN INDEED move well in advance of a storm and hit the ground without any obvious warnings.
"Lightning can travel up to 16 kilometres (about 10 miles) ahead of a thunderstorm," says weatherman Graham Creed.
Dr Karl  Kruszelnicki tells the story of a jet at a United States Air Force base that was refuelling on a sunny, cloudless day.

But there was a storm on the horizon.
"Then bingo, it sent a lightning bolt to the aeroplane and blew up the fuel vapour and killed a bunch of people," he says.

[Far-reaching lightning]

~ Lightning comes out of the ground as well as down from the sky, as we saw in one of the videos above.
It may look like there's just one bolt zig-zagging towards the ground, but there's actually a bolt that leaps up to meet it.

It's just that the bolt from the ground is so fast that we can't see it.
Even though our eyes don't catch it, this answering bolt is much bigger than the one from the clouds, in every way!

"The one coming down is maybe centimetres across and carrying tens of thousands of amps," says Dr Kruszelnicki "and it's moving at a 150 kilometres per second, and that's slow."As this bolt coming down gets within 25 to 60 metres off the ground there is so much electrical tension between the ground and the bolt that an answering bolt rises from the Earth to meet it.

"And this bolt coming up is about a metre across, and instead of 10,000 amps you've got a million amps. And instead of 150 kilometres a second, 150,000 kps. So you don't see it. But you can photograph it with an ultra-high speed camera."

~ BE ESPECIALLY WATCHFUL IN AREAS WHERE WEATHER FRONTS COLLIDE.   TWO TYPES OF ICE CRYSTALS SPARK LIGHTNING BOLTS.

When there is a strong updraft, these different types of ice can form high up in a storm cloud, even in the tropics.
A global survey of thunderstorms that counted lightning flashes and correlated them with the volume of ice crystals, confirmed that ice is present in lightning all across the globe.

~ Volcanoes and solar winds can cause lightning

Volcanic eruptions can result in particularly spectacular lightning bolts.

Although the phenomenon is fairly common and has been photographed since the 1940s, when Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy, it is not found in all types of volcanic eruptions, says Dr Adele Crozier of Geosciences Australia.
"It's mostly associated with explosive volcanism," she says.

The lightning strikes don't occur as part of a normal thunderstorm, but instead take place within the eruption column and are caused by charged ash particles. However, scientists still don't know exactly what causes them.

[Lightning in volcanic eruption]

At the other end of the spectrum of spectacular eruptions there's evidence that high-energy particles in the solar wind may influence thunderstorms.

UK researchers found a significant increase in lightning bolts in the 40 days after the Earth passed through dense streams of high-speed solar wind.

"Cosmic rays, tiny particles from across the universe accelerated to close to the speed of light by exploding stars, have been thought to play a part in thundery weather down on Earth, but our work provides new evidence that similar, if lower energy, particles created by our own Sun also affect lightning," says Dr Chris Scott of the University of Reading.

May 20, 2016, one can see in this super-slow-motion video, a series of "stepped leaders" emerge from the underside of a thunderstorm toward the ground.
THESE ARE NOT USUALLY SEEN BY HUMANS AS THEY HAPPEN TOO QUICKLY, BUT BE AWARE, THEY ARE PRESENT IN THUNDERSTORMS.

21 CATTLE KILLED BY ONE LIGHTNING BOLT JUST YESTERDAY HERE IN AMERICA.

May 27th 2016
A farmer in South Dakota said he lost $45,000 worth of livestock after a single bolt of lightning hit a metal bale feeder, killing 21 cows. The Moody County Sheriff's office posted this photo of the dead cattle to their Facebook page yesterday.
The sheriff's office says this is a good reminder about the power of lightning and just how deadly it can be.
On average, lightning kills about 49 people a year in the United States.
There have been five lightning fatalities so far in 2016.

June, July, and August are the peak months for lightning fatalities.

If you can hear thunder, then you are within striking range of lightning.

Just remember, "When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!"

IN THE ABOVE VIDEO, LIGHTNING "SPRITES", A MOST ASTONISHING VIDEO.

ABOVE VIDEO OFFERED "JUST FOR FUN"....WORST WEATHER IN OUR COSMOS?