Explained: Lightning strikes sailboat, sends sparks flying
Sparks flew off the mast of an unlucky sailboat in Boston Harbor after lightning struck on July 6.
Harry Minucci filmed this footage of a bolt of lightning hitting a vessel moored in the Columbia Yacht Club marina. Minucci told Storyful he took out his camera after seeing lightning strikes in the distance, and couldn’t believe he captured this moment on camera.
Luckily, nobody was on board at the time of the incident. Weather Network meteorologist Tyler Hamilton, because lightning yields a lot of power.
"First of all, the air surrounding the strike [seen in the video] heats to around 10,000 degrees Celsius."
In the same area, but invisible to the human eye, are negative and positive charges that combined to create the spectacular explosion seen in the video above. The crash could be heard from 20 km away.
the U.S. sees about 20 million lightning strikes each year.
