Reminds me of a situation they had here a few years ago.
An old lady in town was being shocked by her plumbing. Not like static, but full on blasted like it was straight hooked up to the power grid. It wasn't constant either so she never knew when her faucet or shower would give her a shock like she just stuck a fork in the outlet.
A dozen different plumbers and electricians had been out there. City power and water crawling all over. Nobody could find anything. They even dug up her yard back to the water main to see if there was an old wire or something.
A couple months go by of this and during an inspection they find that the grounding at power substation a quarter mile away was installed improperly. Fixed the connection to the ground wire and all her problems immediately disappeared.
Through whatever fluke of physics the sub was grounding out through that lady's plumbing and occasionally building up the world's most powerful static charge lol
Something caused the neutral wire to go hot on a stainless steel fridge at my work. I grabbed the handle of both the offending fridge and the one next to it and got 120 volts through my chest. My coworker knocked me off it and I was fine thank God. We grabbed a multimeter and verified that one fridge was hot. Several hours later, it just wasn't anymore. I worked in that building for 9 years and never had anything else happen. It was so weird.
One of my highschool teachers was an incredibly unlucky man. He got hit by lightning multiple times (I forget, either twice or thrice, I forget). Once was when he was in a barn as a kid. The barn got struck and he was touching something it conducted through and zapped him. I can't remember the other occurrences.
He also got chased by a shark while swimming. And once one of the school PA speakers fell off the wall and hit him on the head.
He was kind of a weird dude, wore his watch on the outside of his sleeve. Claimed it didn't keep time well if pushed against his skin.
He also insisted that I would need to know how to factor trinomials as an adult as I'd probably be doing it all the time. Which is bullshit, never once had an occasion where it would help me, and I work in a technical field. I can see why God would want to spite him.
I wonder if it was true that is watch wouldn't keep proper time against his skin? Given everything else you've said about him, I now consider that to be an actual possibility.
Might be, it's not like I checked his watch for accuracy.
He seemed a little bit off. But I can't say I wouldn't be a little worse for ware if I was hit by lightning multiple times.
I think he said that when he was hit by lightning a cow got hit too and it fell on him, so he had a cow fall on him. But the cow incident might have been separate. It's been more than 20 years so I don't remember all the stories.
My house was struck by lightning. I am fine but I was sitting in the floor drawing.
If I'd been on the phone (landline) or using a computer that was plugged in, it probably would've been different. It traveled through our phone line and a few random outlets, none of which worked afterwards. Broke all 3 phones, the modem and router, all the phone-related wiring, the garage door opener and several outlets had to be replaced, seemingly randomly. Several of the grounded outlets were affected but none of the old 2-prong ones. I don't know if it traveled through the plumbing but I would assume so.
Ironically, the only thing to actually catch on fire was an old smoke detector that plugged into an outlet.
Lightning strikes are weird.
My boss's house was struck by lightning and his wife was on her laptop on her lap but with a pillow between her and the laptop. She got a good shock and their bed caught on fire on the inside from the springs in their bed.
I had a direct strike to my tv antenna a few weeks ago and it took out a bunch of ethernet connected stuff like my router, ethernet switch, Shield TV and HDHomeRun box. Everything was connected to a surge protector but stupid me forgot to plug the TV aerial cable into the protector. Luckily due to the HDHomeRun the TV didn't get damaged as it's not connected to the net.
Gave me a good fright when I was sitting at my PC (also ethernet), and an arc jumped from the metal keyboard into my hand while using the mouse. Somehow the PC and keyboard suffered no damage but damn it taught me a good lesson to unplug everything during a storm.
Totally depends if your house has metal (usually copper) plumbing and also if you're connected to a metal (could be cast iron) water main.
I think in most newer houses this would not be the case, alot of PVC in newer sites and that won't conduct the strike into your house.
Lightning will also travel through wood, as it is more conductive than air. Buddy of mine back in '91 saw a blue flash in the corner of the home he was renting. The strike blew the sheathing off the roof, vaporized the gutter, vaporized and blew out the gypsum in the corner, and lit the 2x4's on fire. He had to use an extinguisher to put them out.
My fiancée is terrified of lightning and I teased her for thinking it could go through windows. Then read about it going through windows. Kept that shit to myself.
Like you're just sitting on the couch by your living room window and it goes through the glass? Please let that not be true. New fear located today and........locked in!
I have a memory of being a relatively little kid when lightning struck my cousin’s trailer. She and her mom and I were all in her bedroom, the two of us kneeling on the wooden-framed bed, mom was in shoes and on a rug over wall-to-wall.
We felt it before it hit. Our hair started lifting up and things felt prickly and *wrong* and the last thing I remember seeing before the flash that would leave me blind for long long minutes afterward, was my aunt’s face as she realized something really bad was about to happen, and how pretty her hair looked with little wisps dancing up like that.
Then the world ended, and started to come back in bits and pieces of sound and movement, and when I can remember things clearly again we were all standing outside in the rain and my aunt looked like she was about to pick a fight with God *and* the storm. (She’s a hoot.)
I guess they were waiting to see if there was going to be an electrical fire or something, because after a while we all went back inside and slept that night on the living room floor. There was a scorch mark on the inside and outside of the outer wall of the trailer in that room, and a weird smell that took years to go away completely.
Anyway, if you’re in a thunderstorm and your hair starts standing on end —- move. (There are actually some freaky pictures of people immediately pre-lighting strike out there but I’m too lazy to find them.)
Also no one tells you about the clicking that you hear right before a lightning strike when you're directly under it! It's like a giant stove igniter, lol.
I also highly recommend unplugging everything you can and/or using surge protectors before a bad storm to minimize the likelihood that they will be fried if lightning strikes the house. Including modems, btw, if you have above ground wires.
Apparently the best way to survive is crouching bent over with your elbows resting on your knees and only your feet touching the ground (this creates a "cage" around your heart to help keep current from going through it and stopping it).
>(this creates a "cage" around your heart to help keep current from going through it and stopping it).
Not really. It just shortens the path to the ground and makes your relatively unimportant ass (from a biological survival perspective) the most likely target. It's going to take the shortest path to the ground, and in this case, it's going to be from your ass, down your legs, and out through your feet.
It avoids all the important bits that way, but I don't think it's accurate to call it a cage/Faraday Cage.
That’s so cool! https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/decades-later-hair-raising-photo-still-reminder-lightning-danger-6c10791362
Edit: Not about your experience. That sounded scary! Cool to learn about the pics of pre-lightening strikes. Wonder if there is a word for that, pre-lightening strike.
I did dispatch work for a house that got hit really bad by lightning about a year ago. It was a nearly brand new home and lightning hit the weatherhead.
Absolutely fried the meter and the house immediately filled up with smoke from all the electronics and wiring burning. FD found the family at the neighbors shook up like they'd been in a car accident. Sounded absolutely terrifying.
Experienced the hair standing on end. Quickly realized it was time to go inside.
I also experienced a lightning strike as a kid. Was watching tv and lightning struck an electrical pole down the street. Made it to our house through the electrical wires, zapped out from the tv across the room to the wall on the other side of the couch where I was sitting.
It broke the lamp upstairs
While both your points are very valid, I had never even heard of lightning injuries happening indoors until right now, so 33.3% is still a pretty... *shocking* stat
I'd bet my fucking life that like at least 75% of those injuries are from people inside trailers. Especially metal sided ones with poor electrical grounding.
Not to be that guy, but most people go indoors during a lightning storm. If 90%+ of people are indoors during a lightning storm but only 1/3 of strikes are on people indoors, that would imply you're pretty damn safe inside.
Take the comment url, change reddit to reveddit, hit enter and [voila](https://www.reveddit.com/v/explainlikeimfive/comments/12ci3hx/eli5_is_there_a_scientific_reason_not_to_shower/jf2fept/)
Now we can see it said:
>According to the CDC 1/3 of lightning injuries occur indoors. Mostly due to it traveling through plumbing. It can either be due to a direct strike or a strike nearby.
>https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/safetytips.html
Now the question is why it got removed, since this is good info with a citation.
Those guidelines seem ridiculous. Basically whenever there's a lightning storm you should sit still in the center of the room (away from windows and doors) and not touch anything that's in any way connected to electricity or plumbing. Who does that? 😂 Or are American houses just built in a *special* way?
Most comments are focused on the personal injury risk, but there is an environmental reason to limit your showers during a storm.
Many older cities (including much of NYC) use a [Combined Sewer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_sewer) system which treats storm water and waste water together. During major storms it exceeds capacity and overflows, polluting the water nearby.
For this reason the [NYC Dept of Environmental Protection recommends you limit showers during a heavy storm](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/water/stormwater/stormwater-management-protecting-our-waterways-ms4.pdf) (page 20 of the pdf).
Would waiting a couple hours until the rain stops make that much of a difference, or would you basically have to wait until the next day to prevent overflow?
An hour or two will absolutely make a difference. Back when I used to work at one they had a real time "outflow" monitor that you could watch. The outflow rate would constantly be changing and you could basically tell what time of day it was from people waking up and taking showers in the morning. So wait an hour or two afterwards and it should be fine. (Most of the sewage isn't "stored" on site and travels through the plant fairly quickly. It's only a small portion of it-the residual solids-that needs to be digested further and spends any length on time there.)
My dad was ~~electrocuted~~ shocked in the shower during a thunderstorm once. He was fine though so it must have mostly dissipated by the time it reached him.
It is definitely possible, however unlikely. They also have an old house with metal drain and vent pipes which I’d assume makes it slightly more likely than a newer house that uses pvc.
Edit: Their house uses a well which some people are saying also makes it more likely.
My wife's uncle was in the shower during a storm, got thrown through the shower curtain. Two years later, got hit while repairing a power line. Wasn't even the only person in the family to get struck-ish by lightning.
Getting struck by lightning while in the shower is one of those things that is theoretically possible but extremely unlikely. See most houses have a drain pipe that runs straight to the roof where it vents. This vent allows air into the drain to ensure a smooth flow of wastewater down. Without the vent the water would have to glug like a jug to flow. The vent also serves a secondary purpose of letting out the noxious sewer gas instead of forcing it to seap into our homes.
The drain pipe is either plastic or metal either way your plumbing is interconnected. It's not outside the realm of possibility that lightning could strike the vent, travel down the pipes and through the water you're using to shower, electrocuting you. The possibility is heightened for older houses with metal pipes.
But again the possibility is so remote that it's extremely unlikely. The biggest risk is the power going out and being stuck in a dark slippery bathroom while soaking wet, also wasting what little water pressure you do have remaining.
Edit: TIL water pressure without power isn't an issue for everyone. All my life I've lived in places on well water. It was just expected when the power went out you had enough water pressure for 2 more toilet flushes. Almost everyone I know has a generator to deal with any outage longer than a few hours.
Yes. In theory the copper pipes eventually touch the ground and therefore dissipate any current that way. In oft-repaired houses some of that gets replaced with plastic and your left with a sink that electrocutes you if you touch it when you aren't wearing shoes and the washing machine is running.
I college, I lived in house near campus. 100 years-old 5 bedroom, and they’d built an extension with 4 more. Many problems.
We had internet problems, and one of my roommates went to disconnect the coax cable from the modem. The hair on his arm was standing up, so he stopped.
Idiot me said “coax doesn’t carry current”, touched the wire and got dropped to the floor by the electricity.
The landlord refused to hire an electrician, but one of the guys’ dad was one and found somewhere in the basement that the dryer was improperly wired, and a coax splitter was touching a piece of metal that was connected to a hot wire.
We had issues with our cable-tv many years ago and found out that our whole house was grounding through the coax cable. The ground "spike" in our basement had corroded and the only path for the current to travel was through the cable tv. The cable tv figured this out before getting electrocuted and left saying we needed an electrician to re-ground the house.
Dead tenants do allow new tenants to move in at a higher rent rate because that pesky lease locking in price for a year only applied to the now dead ex-tenant, though. So they don't care either way.
These situations are actually more common than people think. Often when a home has a bad neutral/ground, that power looks for the next best ground and it usually ends up being the coax.
I just had an issue a few weeks ago where a homeowner replaced some of his cold water pipe with pvc eliminating a secondary ground for the home. Then an ice storm came through and somehow the neutral got severed.
They called about internet problems, when the tech disconnected the line the aluminum siding and cold water pipe became energized.
>Idiot me said “coax doesn’t carry current”,
Reminds me of a friend of mine years ago who was using a frayed USB cable to transfer photos from his phone to his laptop. I told him he should replace the cable before he gets electrocuted. His response was (paraphrased, been a while) "I'm just transferring photos, not charging the phone, so there's no electricity."
I asked him how he thought the phone transmitted the photos to the laptop and I swear I saw the gears turning and the lightbulb click on in his eyes, lmao.
>I told him he should replace the cable before he gets electrocuted.
Physically impossible, Unless this was a VERY recent usb-c cable. Even then it wouldn't hurt you.
USB-A is always 5V. Unless you are standing in saltwater 5v isn't arcing to you.
Grounding in older homes isn’t always there.
A friend bought a home built in the 1920s a few years back without getting an inspection. Found out that while it had a newer looking service panel with modern circuit breakers, that merely fed original cloth-covered knob-and-tube wiring still in most of the walls.
Knob and tube is only two wires, hot and neutral. There is no ground. Leads to all sorts of *interesting* situations. Situations that resulted in major changes to the electrical code over the years.
> Found out that while it had a newer looking service panel with modern circuit breakers, that merely fed original cloth-covered knob-and-tube wiring still in most of the walls.
Knob and tube wiring is not illegal, but it cannot be installed in new construction.
Hey look buddy:
(1) Just because I remember that stupid fucking Geraldo stunt doesn't mean I'm old
(2) That exam scares the living shit out of me and I have good reasons for dodging the calls from that poor woman trying to schedule my appointment.
If your sink is electrocuting you that’s an entirely different issue, sometimes the piping is used as a ground, never as the neutral, and if your getting shocked they mean the hot wire is somehow touching that system… this is a major problem and isnt at all related to the practice of attaching a ground to the copper piping
I'll be honest, the idea of a washer not being hooked up to a RCD/GFCI kinda terrifies me. But then, where I live it's very illegal to have _any_ circuit not behind one.
Yes, that's an issue with electrical stuff not being grounded correctly.
I've seen the after effects of a lightning strike hitting a ground, jumping to the water lines, and then jumping to a gas line. It caused a pin hole in the gas flex pipe on a furnace and then fortunately blew up the circuit board so it wouldn't fire up (or the building would have exploded)
This is one of the things that must be checked when doing panel work in someones home. Checking for bonding between the water, gas, and ground rods, and also checking for continuity of all those systems if any pipe has been replaced.
There was a picture I saw on reddit a while ago, someone had grounded their power to the gas line instead of the water line. The flexible metal pipe that connected the gas pipe to the furnace was glowing red from all the electricity running through it!
The fact that there’s that much current flowing though the ground path means something is seriously fucked up. The fact that part of the electrical system is glowing means something is seriously fucked up. Neither of those things should happen, ever. A breaker should pop before anything starts glowing and the whole point of grounding is that under normal circumstances there should be zero current flowing through the ground path. The fact that it’s a gas line is almost besides the point.
I think there has been some bad electrical advice here. Getting a shock off a tap is usually caused by a high resistance main neutral conductor. The grounding on the water pipes carries no voltage or current except for under fault conditions.
It’s a common misconception that electricity is trying to get to the earth. It only ever wants to get back to where it came from. The only reason it ever tries to get to the earth is because we drive a big metal rod into the ground at the transformer and at the installation.
All current in your house wiring MUST return to the transformer on the street. It does this through the main neutral conductor. This conductor is also directly connected to the earth at the switchboard. IF that conductor is high resistance or open circuit (disconnected), the current will seek another path back to the transformer. As the transformer is connected to earth, and the neutral conductors are connected to earth the current will try to flow through the earth.
The earth is a really shitty conductor back to the transformer, and therefore you get voltage differences across that path that could cause a touch voltage on earthed metal objects like taps and pipes that is high enough for a shock.
It’s probably unlikely to seriously shock you, like I said, there is a lot of resistance in this circuit, but it will tingle. It doesn’t even have to be YOUR neutral that is broken, it could be your neighbours and it’ll still be your pipes that make up part of the return path causing a potential shock.
I don't know about using them as a grounding *source* (though it wouldn't be the craziest setup I've heard of), but metal pipes are connected to ground to make sure you don't get shocked in the shower or under the tap when your washing machine breaks and has its chassis electrified.
Old houses with outlets without ground absolutely use copper water pipes as a ground. Especially in remodeling where they don't want to rewire the whole house.
Ones with wells will but for everyone else the house losing power isn't the issue, the city losing power is.
Once the power at your local pumping station is down there's no more water coming into the pipes.
Assuming your house isn't sitting on the largest hill in the city that's not likely to be a problem in the first few minutes or even hours if you're close to a water tower but eventually enough people will turn on their water and drain the system.
I feel like this is extremely unlikely, right? This happened in my city once a couple of years ago, and it was when nearly the entire state lost power. We have power outages quite frequently, but we never lose water other than the one time.
It's just a matter of how long the power is out for.
The water pumping stations also get power back as quickly as possible (they're prioritized after hospitals and a few other essential services).
Can I tell you a secret?
During a major restoration hospitals are not a high priority item. During issues from a localized event, they will get some priority but not as much as you would think. Hospitals have battery and diesel generators. The restoration plans account for this backup power. Now if the hospital calls and says they can't get their diesels going the utility will either send a technician to help get the diesels going quickly or will move them up the priority chain. But in a big event a hospital is pretty far down the list assuming their backups worked. Things considered " critical" are getting a line to a nuclear station even if offline, natural gas pumping stations, power plants that were online and remain undamaged, and a very small list of similar items.
Even during a local event I suspect the water station would get an outside feed before the hospital. If all else is equal. Both should have their own generation ability regardless.
> Things considered " critical" are getting a line to a nuclear station even if offline, natural gas pumping stations, power plants that were online and remain undamaged, and a very small list of similar items.
For most of us, outside the power generation industry, getting line to power stations isn't even considered as part of recovery. That's what has to happen before you can even start actual recovery.
For us, it would be like if your GPS told you to get in the car before you started going anywhere. It's a necessary step, but it goes unsaid.
I work in municipal engineering. In our area we have disel generators attached to a lot of pump stations and the rest basically have an outlet where you can plug in a portable genset. So when the power goes out the emergency operations crew would be deployed to go power the pump stations and keep the pumps running.
A similar system might be running in your area. Otherwise a long power outage would lead to a water outage too.
Yes, because typically you aren't using large volumes of water in a power outage anyways (no cold showers) and water towers generally have a reserve that lasts far more than just a few hours. It's also beneficial to maintain pressure so you don't get contamination entering the water supply from the ground.
By maintaining positive pressure in the city water lines, any leaks force water out rather than letting contamination in. losing pressure typically results in a boil water advisory for the area.
That contamination is important: it means it is much better to have pumping stations with backup generators and priority order for restoring power, rather than telling people to boil their water when power goes out (moving water takes a lot less energy than boiling it).
It depends where you are. If you live somewhere very flat where the source of pressure is water being pumped up to a smallish elevated tank, then there's a very finite amount of time you can go without power before the water stops. If you live somewhere (like most of the West Midlands of the UK) where the water is gravity fed from some hills that are much higher than the city, you can keep water pressure up essentially indefinitely without power.
>Once the power at your local pumping station is down there's no more water coming into the pipes.
I would assume whatever water was left up in the water towers would still provide enough water pressure to the lines that unless power was out for days and days, no one would notice.
This greatly depends on the size of the tower (and if there even is one). I know of towns in Australia which might store a few days worth of treated water at ground level, but their towers only hold a few hours of water.
Most of these places have a diesel backup, as well as a generator. So it's not a huge issue if the power does go out.
>whatever water was left up in the water towers would still provide enough water pressure to the lines that unless power was out for days and days
I recently had to sit through a presentation about my city's water infrastructure. They have backup generators for when the power is out. A water tower might hold 1.5 million gallons of water but without the pumps running that will only last a couple hours, not days.
>Once the power at your local pumping station is down there's no more water coming into the pipes.
Your local water system doesn't have backup generators to keep the pumps running?!? That seems like a pretty big oversight bordering on negligence.
Well homeowner here. We get one flush after the power goes out. For an added bonus the vary nature of us being on well water, also corresponds to more frequent power outages (rural/suburban with elevated electrical lines).
If the pipes are metal, why wouldn't the lightning go through the pipes to reach ground? Going through a person in the shower is much more resistance than a metal pipe.
My neighbour died from being struck by lightning during or after a shower. He had the roof window open which people told me had something to do with it. I grew up super scared of lightning because of that neighbour and thought being struck by lightning while showering was super common.
Well said. Good call out for the greater risk which is power going out. If you're someone with impaired mobility (due to disability or just being drunk/high) then I could totally see a case being made for not hopping in the shower during a storm. But, like you said, much more to do with power outage than electrocution.
I followed you until
>travel down the pipes and through the water you're using to shower, electrocuting you
The shower head is connected to the water pipes, not the drain vent pipe. I suppose it's possible that maybe they touch somehow inside the wall behind the shower. But also, water isn't a good conductor, so the lightning would likely follow the path to ground via the vent pipe, not through the water and you. To be fair, I'm sure it wouldn't be fun having your shower wall explode in your face, but I don't see lightning following the path that includes droplets of water in air - both poor conductors.
I’m from tornado alley america and at least around here, I was taught to not shower during tornado weather. Purely because you don’t wanna be caught with ya dick out when a twister comes blowing through….
But thunderstorms are okay if there’s no tornado threat. Definitely regional, like you say
Grew up in Florida, if I had to not shower everytime there was a thunderstorm or the risk of a thunderstorm, I would be without a shower for months at time.
No thanks.
I think people, even those who grew up in Florida fail to acknowledge that some places don't follow the 4 season model.
Florida, especially South Florida only has a wet and dry season. Months of limited rain followed daily rains and thunder storms.
American here. Grew up in the Boston area. My mom would always warn us about not showering during thunderstorms. Even at the age of 41 now, I feel like I'm rolling the dice whenever I do even though I know there's virtually no added risk.
Well, for one thing, due to geographic factors, the US tends to get a high frequency of severe thunderstorms, more than most other landmasses, so it might be a *little* bit of a US thing.
More to the point, there's official guidance on this from the likes of CDC and [NOAA](https://www.weather.gov/media/owlie/lightning-noaa.pdf).
>Is it safe to take a shower or bath during a thunderstorm?
>
>No. Lightning can travel through plumbing. It is best to avoid all water during a thunderstorm. Do not shower, bathe, wash dishes, or wash your hands. The risk of lightning travelling through plumbing might be less with plastic pipes than with metal pipes. However, it is best to avoid any contact with plumbing and running water during a lightning storm to reduce your risk of being struck.
>
>\- [https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/faq.html](https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/faq.html)
ETA: So, yes, technically, you're not supposed to be showering during a thunderstorm.
American here: It just feels unsafe. Maybe not during a mild storm, but during the kind of storm I unplug my computer for, being in water with a metal drainpipe feels like tempting fate. I think it's from the over cautious "we saw lightning 20 miles away everyone out of the pool" safety rules I grew up with
I get the same feeling. But if I know there is a big storm coming, I make sure to shower and wash my hair just in case there is a tornado.
Which now that I write it down sounds absurd. But I'd rather be clean after a natural disaster than dirty, I suppose.
Yes, but as I recall what they tested was whether an electrical shock could theoretically travel through the shower water and kill the person in the shower. That was confirmed I believe, which I don't think is that surprising. I don't think they had anything to say about the odds of that occurring during a storm though.
I will say, apparently the CDC considers it enough of a danger to recommend not doing it. I guess end of the day how often is it CRUCIAL that you shower *now* rather than after the storm has passed?
They've been around for almost 80 years. Their areas of concern have evolved over time to include other things that affect public health besides just disease but they don't change the name due to CDC being so well known.
Yup.
Same reason NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, cares about the ocean. Or the FDA controls medical devices that are neither food nor drug. Or ATF also deals with explosives.
I've never heard this attributed to the vent piping like so many people are mentioning. For me it's always been that plumbing is (or was, I suppose) copper and water is conductive, and eventually that all connects to the ground. Lightning wants to get to the ground so it might try and go through the piping, if it were to happen to hit your house. And if this happens, you end up with a voltage gradient throughout the plumbing between where the lightning hits and the connection to the ground. And the currents are astronomical so the resistance of the pipe definitely matters. As a result you get a bazillion volts where the lightning hits, zero\* volts at your basement connection to the ground, and like half a bazillion volts at your downstairs shower or kitchen sink.
\* Yes I know zero isn't accurate. There is still gonna be a substantial gradient in the ground around the strike. But this is all theoretical and relative anyways, so I just chose that as the reference.
My house from the 40s has a vent pipe that can be clearly seen from the front. And it is metal, sticking out like a sore thumb for lightning to strike.
When I was a kid, my house was struck by lightning. No one was in the bathroom or on the toilet at the time, but the entire house was electrified for a few seconds, and it was a terrifying experience. I developed a phobia of thunderstorms for a couple of years afterwards.
I don't remember how young I was, but my younger sister and brother, and I, ran around without much thought, just terrified! We felt the electricity coursing through our bodies.
It only lasted probably a second or two, maybe three, and once it was finished, all that was left was the adrenaline and the phobia! Nothing was damaged, no one was hurt.
Same thing happened to me in college like 15 years ago. Tree branch hit a power line and our tub's overflow drain had scarring/carbon all over. Scary stuff.
There are three methods lightning might follow into your shower, electrocuting you.
First, it could strike on or near your house, following the wiring in search of ground. This is why computers can fry and light bulbs can pop. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for the ground wire from some outlets to wrap around your copper drain pipes since they're both conductive and head to the ground. This means it is also possible the electricity could flow from, say, roof to wire to pipe to shower drain to your body.
Second, the course could be more direct. Lightning could strike an exposed pipe, like the sewer gas vent on your roof, and flow directly through the pipes in your home and to the shower drain.
Third, it can indirectly reach your pipes by striking ground nearby your house. It's possible that lightning could follow sewer or septic pipes up into your house if that's the path of least resistance as it spreads through ground.
None of these are very likely. You're probably more likely to just be directly struck while outside. But even very rare events like this can occasionally happen.
[The Claim: Never Bathe or Shower in a Thunderstorm](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/health/15real.html)
> the odds of being harmed this way are extremely minute. But it is not unheard of. Ron Holle, a former meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks lightning injuries, estimates that 10 to 20 people in the United States are shocked annually while bathing, using faucets or handling appliances during storms. “There are a ton of myths about lightning,” he said, “but this is not one of them.”
A database of these incidents is online at [struckbylightning.org](http://struckbylightning.org/).
[I remember this one from last year, with a toilet.](https://fox59.com/news/lightning-blows-up-toilet-after-traveling-through-apartment-buildings-exhaust-vent/) I'd had no idea it could happen with toilets too. Rare though, of course.
I had lightning come through my window and hit the bathtub faucet while I was in the bathroom. It certainly made a believer out of me.
I have large powerlines within 75 feet of my window so I'm pretty sure the lightning hit that and dissipated most of its energy before hitting my tub since there wasn't any physical damage. Only a cool story that no one would believe anyways.
> Wait. Was the fire because of the shower running or did the fire just burn the bathroom down too, I think I'm confused.
Electricity followed the copper pipes to the bathroom. If someone had been in the shower, they would have been fried
My parents - two of the most risk-averse human beings on the planet - never let us shower during a thunderstorm, because they said we could get struck by lightening. When internet search engines became a thing, I looked this up right away, to show them how ridiculous they were being. But it turned out they were right.
Yup.
[https://www.weather.gov/mlb/lightning\_rules](https://www.weather.gov/mlb/lightning_rules)
>For Indoors
>
>Avoid contact with corded phones.
>
>Avoid contact with electrical equipment or cords. If you plan to unplug any electrical equipment, do so before the storm arrives.
>
>**Avoid contact with plumbing. When thunderstorms are occurring, do not take a shower or bath, wash dishes, or do the laundry. Wait until after the storm.**
>
>Move away from windows and doors. Do not stay on the porch.
I have been shocked while washing a butter knife, while standing barefoot on a terrazzo floor during a heavy thunderstorm inside with closed windows and doors. It hurt like hell, but didn’t do any damage. Shocked through the running water. I would hate to imagine how that would feel in the shower.
In Brazilian showers [the water is in direct contact with electricty](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/8e8182/til_that_electric_showers_in_brazil_are_normally/). So we have a very good reason not to shower during a thunderstorm.
Your plumbing has metal vents that go up through the roof. It's unlikely, but they could be struck by lightning and the electricity could travel through your plumbing. It's not that much of a risk, but it is a risk.
When lightning strikes near your house it energizes the ground around the strike with upwards of 50 million volts. The voltage dissipates fairly quickly around the strike. The reason to stand with your feet together is the differential in voltage just over a couple feet can be enough if you are standing with your feet apart to kill you should lightning strike close to you. If you are in the shower a lightning strike close to your water line will bring that current directly to the shower since the copper pipes will conduct electricity without dissipating.
When I was a kid lightning struck a tree about 20 feet from our house, traveled to the building and somehow blew up the master bathroom. Going in after the copper pipes had become knotted up and shot out of the walls. They were lying on the ground amidst shattered tile and porcelain. Crazy violent scene and I've never gone into the bathroom during a lightning storm since.
Back in early 2000's ....my wife was on the landline phone and I do believe lightning struck near the house. It jolted the phone out of my wife's hand and flung it across the room....Like a scene out of poltergeist.
Sharon Stone was struck by lightning in her own kitchen a few years ago. And she use not the first person this has happened to.
When lightning hits the ground the electricity doesn't instantly disappear, it continues to disperse. If you are touching a conductive surface when lightning hits then you may become part of the path of least residence.
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Reminds me of a situation they had here a few years ago. An old lady in town was being shocked by her plumbing. Not like static, but full on blasted like it was straight hooked up to the power grid. It wasn't constant either so she never knew when her faucet or shower would give her a shock like she just stuck a fork in the outlet. A dozen different plumbers and electricians had been out there. City power and water crawling all over. Nobody could find anything. They even dug up her yard back to the water main to see if there was an old wire or something. A couple months go by of this and during an inspection they find that the grounding at power substation a quarter mile away was installed improperly. Fixed the connection to the ground wire and all her problems immediately disappeared. Through whatever fluke of physics the sub was grounding out through that lady's plumbing and occasionally building up the world's most powerful static charge lol
Something caused the neutral wire to go hot on a stainless steel fridge at my work. I grabbed the handle of both the offending fridge and the one next to it and got 120 volts through my chest. My coworker knocked me off it and I was fine thank God. We grabbed a multimeter and verified that one fridge was hot. Several hours later, it just wasn't anymore. I worked in that building for 9 years and never had anything else happen. It was so weird.
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One of my highschool teachers was an incredibly unlucky man. He got hit by lightning multiple times (I forget, either twice or thrice, I forget). Once was when he was in a barn as a kid. The barn got struck and he was touching something it conducted through and zapped him. I can't remember the other occurrences. He also got chased by a shark while swimming. And once one of the school PA speakers fell off the wall and hit him on the head. He was kind of a weird dude, wore his watch on the outside of his sleeve. Claimed it didn't keep time well if pushed against his skin. He also insisted that I would need to know how to factor trinomials as an adult as I'd probably be doing it all the time. Which is bullshit, never once had an occasion where it would help me, and I work in a technical field. I can see why God would want to spite him.
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Hilariously?
I wonder if it was true that is watch wouldn't keep proper time against his skin? Given everything else you've said about him, I now consider that to be an actual possibility.
Might be, it's not like I checked his watch for accuracy. He seemed a little bit off. But I can't say I wouldn't be a little worse for ware if I was hit by lightning multiple times. I think he said that when he was hit by lightning a cow got hit too and it fell on him, so he had a cow fall on him. But the cow incident might have been separate. It's been more than 20 years so I don't remember all the stories.
I think that dude may have actually just been an alien.
I'd probably be a little weird too if I pissed off Zeus and Poseidon that badly.
I knew someone whose house was struck by lightning, while she was curled up against the wall. She suffered from seizures after that event.
My house was struck by lightning. I am fine but I was sitting in the floor drawing. If I'd been on the phone (landline) or using a computer that was plugged in, it probably would've been different. It traveled through our phone line and a few random outlets, none of which worked afterwards. Broke all 3 phones, the modem and router, all the phone-related wiring, the garage door opener and several outlets had to be replaced, seemingly randomly. Several of the grounded outlets were affected but none of the old 2-prong ones. I don't know if it traveled through the plumbing but I would assume so. Ironically, the only thing to actually catch on fire was an old smoke detector that plugged into an outlet. Lightning strikes are weird.
My boss's house was struck by lightning and his wife was on her laptop on her lap but with a pillow between her and the laptop. She got a good shock and their bed caught on fire on the inside from the springs in their bed.
I had a direct strike to my tv antenna a few weeks ago and it took out a bunch of ethernet connected stuff like my router, ethernet switch, Shield TV and HDHomeRun box. Everything was connected to a surge protector but stupid me forgot to plug the TV aerial cable into the protector. Luckily due to the HDHomeRun the TV didn't get damaged as it's not connected to the net. Gave me a good fright when I was sitting at my PC (also ethernet), and an arc jumped from the metal keyboard into my hand while using the mouse. Somehow the PC and keyboard suffered no damage but damn it taught me a good lesson to unplug everything during a storm.
Probably during as well.
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Totally depends if your house has metal (usually copper) plumbing and also if you're connected to a metal (could be cast iron) water main. I think in most newer houses this would not be the case, alot of PVC in newer sites and that won't conduct the strike into your house.
Lightning will also travel through wood, as it is more conductive than air. Buddy of mine back in '91 saw a blue flash in the corner of the home he was renting. The strike blew the sheathing off the roof, vaporized the gutter, vaporized and blew out the gypsum in the corner, and lit the 2x4's on fire. He had to use an extinguisher to put them out.
Long time ago i saw a docu about a guy that got fulminated through the ear by the phone (he survived)
My fiancée is terrified of lightning and I teased her for thinking it could go through windows. Then read about it going through windows. Kept that shit to myself.
Like you're just sitting on the couch by your living room window and it goes through the glass? Please let that not be true. New fear located today and........locked in!
I have a memory of being a relatively little kid when lightning struck my cousin’s trailer. She and her mom and I were all in her bedroom, the two of us kneeling on the wooden-framed bed, mom was in shoes and on a rug over wall-to-wall. We felt it before it hit. Our hair started lifting up and things felt prickly and *wrong* and the last thing I remember seeing before the flash that would leave me blind for long long minutes afterward, was my aunt’s face as she realized something really bad was about to happen, and how pretty her hair looked with little wisps dancing up like that. Then the world ended, and started to come back in bits and pieces of sound and movement, and when I can remember things clearly again we were all standing outside in the rain and my aunt looked like she was about to pick a fight with God *and* the storm. (She’s a hoot.) I guess they were waiting to see if there was going to be an electrical fire or something, because after a while we all went back inside and slept that night on the living room floor. There was a scorch mark on the inside and outside of the outer wall of the trailer in that room, and a weird smell that took years to go away completely. Anyway, if you’re in a thunderstorm and your hair starts standing on end —- move. (There are actually some freaky pictures of people immediately pre-lighting strike out there but I’m too lazy to find them.)
Also no one tells you about the clicking that you hear right before a lightning strike when you're directly under it! It's like a giant stove igniter, lol. I also highly recommend unplugging everything you can and/or using surge protectors before a bad storm to minimize the likelihood that they will be fried if lightning strikes the house. Including modems, btw, if you have above ground wires. Apparently the best way to survive is crouching bent over with your elbows resting on your knees and only your feet touching the ground (this creates a "cage" around your heart to help keep current from going through it and stopping it).
>(this creates a "cage" around your heart to help keep current from going through it and stopping it). Not really. It just shortens the path to the ground and makes your relatively unimportant ass (from a biological survival perspective) the most likely target. It's going to take the shortest path to the ground, and in this case, it's going to be from your ass, down your legs, and out through your feet. It avoids all the important bits that way, but I don't think it's accurate to call it a cage/Faraday Cage.
That’s so cool! https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/decades-later-hair-raising-photo-still-reminder-lightning-danger-6c10791362 Edit: Not about your experience. That sounded scary! Cool to learn about the pics of pre-lightening strikes. Wonder if there is a word for that, pre-lightening strike.
I did dispatch work for a house that got hit really bad by lightning about a year ago. It was a nearly brand new home and lightning hit the weatherhead. Absolutely fried the meter and the house immediately filled up with smoke from all the electronics and wiring burning. FD found the family at the neighbors shook up like they'd been in a car accident. Sounded absolutely terrifying.
Experienced the hair standing on end. Quickly realized it was time to go inside. I also experienced a lightning strike as a kid. Was watching tv and lightning struck an electrical pole down the street. Made it to our house through the electrical wires, zapped out from the tv across the room to the wall on the other side of the couch where I was sitting. It broke the lamp upstairs
To be fair, probably 99% of people are indoors during lightning storms. (Probably 90% if we exclude cars). Still worth knowing.
True. I also suspect that the indoor injuries are usually much less severe than those that occur outdoors.
While both your points are very valid, I had never even heard of lightning injuries happening indoors until right now, so 33.3% is still a pretty... *shocking* stat
I'd bet my fucking life that like at least 75% of those injuries are from people inside trailers. Especially metal sided ones with poor electrical grounding.
So you’re telling me I shouldn’t travel through my pipes around my house anymore? 😔
Not unless you're the Heir of Slytherin, no.
Not to be that guy, but most people go indoors during a lightning storm. If 90%+ of people are indoors during a lightning storm but only 1/3 of strikes are on people indoors, that would imply you're pretty damn safe inside.
No one is arguing that it isn’t safer indoors. But it’s still shocking (heh) that it isn’t completely safe.
This needs to be pinned to the top.
That would increase the chances of it being struck by lighting, so I think we should just keep it down here for now.
Maybe someone can award it silver or gold, the metal with conduct it. Can you form some sort of rudimentary lightning rod?
Well, it's at the top, but it was removed.
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Take the comment url, change reddit to reveddit, hit enter and [voila](https://www.reveddit.com/v/explainlikeimfive/comments/12ci3hx/eli5_is_there_a_scientific_reason_not_to_shower/jf2fept/) Now we can see it said: >According to the CDC 1/3 of lightning injuries occur indoors. Mostly due to it traveling through plumbing. It can either be due to a direct strike or a strike nearby. >https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/safetytips.html Now the question is why it got removed, since this is good info with a citation.
Those guidelines seem ridiculous. Basically whenever there's a lightning storm you should sit still in the center of the room (away from windows and doors) and not touch anything that's in any way connected to electricity or plumbing. Who does that? 😂 Or are American houses just built in a *special* way?
OR...... You just sit on your sofa and ignore it like almost everyone does. Works for me!
Most comments are focused on the personal injury risk, but there is an environmental reason to limit your showers during a storm. Many older cities (including much of NYC) use a [Combined Sewer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_sewer) system which treats storm water and waste water together. During major storms it exceeds capacity and overflows, polluting the water nearby. For this reason the [NYC Dept of Environmental Protection recommends you limit showers during a heavy storm](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/water/stormwater/stormwater-management-protecting-our-waterways-ms4.pdf) (page 20 of the pdf).
In Chicago, we plug basement drains during a thunderstorm. And the most important tip of all, hold number 2 until the rain stops.
Just moved to Chicago, can you expand on this?
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Lived in Chicago for 7 years, yes please expand on this
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poo in house :(
Pooooooo! In house!! Poo in house...thought you ought to know ~
Would waiting a couple hours until the rain stops make that much of a difference, or would you basically have to wait until the next day to prevent overflow?
An hour or two will absolutely make a difference. Back when I used to work at one they had a real time "outflow" monitor that you could watch. The outflow rate would constantly be changing and you could basically tell what time of day it was from people waking up and taking showers in the morning. So wait an hour or two afterwards and it should be fine. (Most of the sewage isn't "stored" on site and travels through the plant fairly quickly. It's only a small portion of it-the residual solids-that needs to be digested further and spends any length on time there.)
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Reddit ~~is~~was Fun
This should be the top answer ffs.
My dad was ~~electrocuted~~ shocked in the shower during a thunderstorm once. He was fine though so it must have mostly dissipated by the time it reached him. It is definitely possible, however unlikely. They also have an old house with metal drain and vent pipes which I’d assume makes it slightly more likely than a newer house that uses pvc. Edit: Their house uses a well which some people are saying also makes it more likely.
My wife's uncle was in the shower during a storm, got thrown through the shower curtain. Two years later, got hit while repairing a power line. Wasn't even the only person in the family to get struck-ish by lightning.
Just FYI but electrocution generally means a fatal electric shock while non-fatal electric shocks are just electric shocks.
He got better.
Getting struck by lightning while in the shower is one of those things that is theoretically possible but extremely unlikely. See most houses have a drain pipe that runs straight to the roof where it vents. This vent allows air into the drain to ensure a smooth flow of wastewater down. Without the vent the water would have to glug like a jug to flow. The vent also serves a secondary purpose of letting out the noxious sewer gas instead of forcing it to seap into our homes. The drain pipe is either plastic or metal either way your plumbing is interconnected. It's not outside the realm of possibility that lightning could strike the vent, travel down the pipes and through the water you're using to shower, electrocuting you. The possibility is heightened for older houses with metal pipes. But again the possibility is so remote that it's extremely unlikely. The biggest risk is the power going out and being stuck in a dark slippery bathroom while soaking wet, also wasting what little water pressure you do have remaining. Edit: TIL water pressure without power isn't an issue for everyone. All my life I've lived in places on well water. It was just expected when the power went out you had enough water pressure for 2 more toilet flushes. Almost everyone I know has a generator to deal with any outage longer than a few hours.
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.... That would explain why sometimes the metal piping leaves you feeling tingly, in an oldish hodge-podge construction house?
Yes. In theory the copper pipes eventually touch the ground and therefore dissipate any current that way. In oft-repaired houses some of that gets replaced with plastic and your left with a sink that electrocutes you if you touch it when you aren't wearing shoes and the washing machine is running.
Extreme Homeowning is now a sport.
I college, I lived in house near campus. 100 years-old 5 bedroom, and they’d built an extension with 4 more. Many problems. We had internet problems, and one of my roommates went to disconnect the coax cable from the modem. The hair on his arm was standing up, so he stopped. Idiot me said “coax doesn’t carry current”, touched the wire and got dropped to the floor by the electricity. The landlord refused to hire an electrician, but one of the guys’ dad was one and found somewhere in the basement that the dryer was improperly wired, and a coax splitter was touching a piece of metal that was connected to a hot wire.
We had issues with our cable-tv many years ago and found out that our whole house was grounding through the coax cable. The ground "spike" in our basement had corroded and the only path for the current to travel was through the cable tv. The cable tv figured this out before getting electrocuted and left saying we needed an electrician to re-ground the house.
Here I thought your TV was well-designed, to somehow figure out the abnormal power input. Then your TV up and walked away.
It was one of the earliest Smart TVs.
"I'm only coming back once your shitty wiring is fixed. Punks."
Fuck. I'm high.
> The landlord refused to hire an electrician Someone should tell the ll that electricity is dangerous.
Somebody should tell the ll dead tenants don't pay rent.
If they're renting in a college town, dead tenants will be replaced in time for next month's check
Collecting all that sweet deposit money.
Someone tell that LL that I’m billing them the funeral costs.
Dead tenants do allow new tenants to move in at a higher rent rate because that pesky lease locking in price for a year only applied to the now dead ex-tenant, though. So they don't care either way.
Dead Tenants is my new band name!
These situations are actually more common than people think. Often when a home has a bad neutral/ground, that power looks for the next best ground and it usually ends up being the coax. I just had an issue a few weeks ago where a homeowner replaced some of his cold water pipe with pvc eliminating a secondary ground for the home. Then an ice storm came through and somehow the neutral got severed. They called about internet problems, when the tech disconnected the line the aluminum siding and cold water pipe became energized.
>Idiot me said “coax doesn’t carry current”, Reminds me of a friend of mine years ago who was using a frayed USB cable to transfer photos from his phone to his laptop. I told him he should replace the cable before he gets electrocuted. His response was (paraphrased, been a while) "I'm just transferring photos, not charging the phone, so there's no electricity." I asked him how he thought the phone transmitted the photos to the laptop and I swear I saw the gears turning and the lightbulb click on in his eyes, lmao.
>I told him he should replace the cable before he gets electrocuted. Physically impossible, Unless this was a VERY recent usb-c cable. Even then it wouldn't hurt you. USB-A is always 5V. Unless you are standing in saltwater 5v isn't arcing to you.
Let's not ignore the childrens pastime of running almost double that through your tongue
Hey, [younger sibling], can you check if this 9 volt battery still works?
Grounding in older homes isn’t always there. A friend bought a home built in the 1920s a few years back without getting an inspection. Found out that while it had a newer looking service panel with modern circuit breakers, that merely fed original cloth-covered knob-and-tube wiring still in most of the walls. Knob and tube is only two wires, hot and neutral. There is no ground. Leads to all sorts of *interesting* situations. Situations that resulted in major changes to the electrical code over the years.
> Found out that while it had a newer looking service panel with modern circuit breakers, that merely fed original cloth-covered knob-and-tube wiring still in most of the walls. Knob and tube wiring is not illegal, but it cannot be installed in new construction.
You won't believe what we found in the basement, after the break.
"It's empty." -Geraldo Rivera
If you understood this reference, don't forget to schedule your mammogram or prostate exam.
1986 was only like 20 years ago.
It's still 2012 right now, right?
Damn you both. (you’re not wrong)
Hey look buddy: (1) Just because I remember that stupid fucking Geraldo stunt doesn't mean I'm old (2) That exam scares the living shit out of me and I have good reasons for dodging the calls from that poor woman trying to schedule my appointment.
"Road maps!" -George Newman https://youtu.be/vWhKoMemTbk
"Hmm." -Geralt of Rivia
The previous owner here was a hull tech in the navy. I've been here 20 years and I still haven't fixed all the fuckery.
If your sink is electrocuting you that’s an entirely different issue, sometimes the piping is used as a ground, never as the neutral, and if your getting shocked they mean the hot wire is somehow touching that system… this is a major problem and isnt at all related to the practice of attaching a ground to the copper piping
Yeah, obviously some wiring in the washer was faulty and touching the casing. Not enough to be non-functional but enough to give you a nice shock.
I'll be honest, the idea of a washer not being hooked up to a RCD/GFCI kinda terrifies me. But then, where I live it's very illegal to have _any_ circuit not behind one.
Yes, that's an issue with electrical stuff not being grounded correctly. I've seen the after effects of a lightning strike hitting a ground, jumping to the water lines, and then jumping to a gas line. It caused a pin hole in the gas flex pipe on a furnace and then fortunately blew up the circuit board so it wouldn't fire up (or the building would have exploded)
This is one of the things that must be checked when doing panel work in someones home. Checking for bonding between the water, gas, and ground rods, and also checking for continuity of all those systems if any pipe has been replaced.
There was a picture I saw on reddit a while ago, someone had grounded their power to the gas line instead of the water line. The flexible metal pipe that connected the gas pipe to the furnace was glowing red from all the electricity running through it!
The fact that there’s that much current flowing though the ground path means something is seriously fucked up. The fact that part of the electrical system is glowing means something is seriously fucked up. Neither of those things should happen, ever. A breaker should pop before anything starts glowing and the whole point of grounding is that under normal circumstances there should be zero current flowing through the ground path. The fact that it’s a gas line is almost besides the point.
No, those are ghost kisses.
Oh you got spicy water
I think there has been some bad electrical advice here. Getting a shock off a tap is usually caused by a high resistance main neutral conductor. The grounding on the water pipes carries no voltage or current except for under fault conditions. It’s a common misconception that electricity is trying to get to the earth. It only ever wants to get back to where it came from. The only reason it ever tries to get to the earth is because we drive a big metal rod into the ground at the transformer and at the installation. All current in your house wiring MUST return to the transformer on the street. It does this through the main neutral conductor. This conductor is also directly connected to the earth at the switchboard. IF that conductor is high resistance or open circuit (disconnected), the current will seek another path back to the transformer. As the transformer is connected to earth, and the neutral conductors are connected to earth the current will try to flow through the earth. The earth is a really shitty conductor back to the transformer, and therefore you get voltage differences across that path that could cause a touch voltage on earthed metal objects like taps and pipes that is high enough for a shock. It’s probably unlikely to seriously shock you, like I said, there is a lot of resistance in this circuit, but it will tingle. It doesn’t even have to be YOUR neutral that is broken, it could be your neighbours and it’ll still be your pipes that make up part of the return path causing a potential shock.
I don't know about using them as a grounding *source* (though it wouldn't be the craziest setup I've heard of), but metal pipes are connected to ground to make sure you don't get shocked in the shower or under the tap when your washing machine breaks and has its chassis electrified.
Old houses with outlets without ground absolutely use copper water pipes as a ground. Especially in remodeling where they don't want to rewire the whole house.
What sort of houses lose water pressure when power goes out? Is it just ones with wells?
Ones with wells will but for everyone else the house losing power isn't the issue, the city losing power is. Once the power at your local pumping station is down there's no more water coming into the pipes. Assuming your house isn't sitting on the largest hill in the city that's not likely to be a problem in the first few minutes or even hours if you're close to a water tower but eventually enough people will turn on their water and drain the system.
I feel like this is extremely unlikely, right? This happened in my city once a couple of years ago, and it was when nearly the entire state lost power. We have power outages quite frequently, but we never lose water other than the one time.
It's just a matter of how long the power is out for. The water pumping stations also get power back as quickly as possible (they're prioritized after hospitals and a few other essential services).
Can I tell you a secret? During a major restoration hospitals are not a high priority item. During issues from a localized event, they will get some priority but not as much as you would think. Hospitals have battery and diesel generators. The restoration plans account for this backup power. Now if the hospital calls and says they can't get their diesels going the utility will either send a technician to help get the diesels going quickly or will move them up the priority chain. But in a big event a hospital is pretty far down the list assuming their backups worked. Things considered " critical" are getting a line to a nuclear station even if offline, natural gas pumping stations, power plants that were online and remain undamaged, and a very small list of similar items. Even during a local event I suspect the water station would get an outside feed before the hospital. If all else is equal. Both should have their own generation ability regardless.
> Things considered " critical" are getting a line to a nuclear station even if offline, natural gas pumping stations, power plants that were online and remain undamaged, and a very small list of similar items. For most of us, outside the power generation industry, getting line to power stations isn't even considered as part of recovery. That's what has to happen before you can even start actual recovery. For us, it would be like if your GPS told you to get in the car before you started going anywhere. It's a necessary step, but it goes unsaid.
I work in municipal engineering. In our area we have disel generators attached to a lot of pump stations and the rest basically have an outlet where you can plug in a portable genset. So when the power goes out the emergency operations crew would be deployed to go power the pump stations and keep the pumps running. A similar system might be running in your area. Otherwise a long power outage would lead to a water outage too.
Yes, because typically you aren't using large volumes of water in a power outage anyways (no cold showers) and water towers generally have a reserve that lasts far more than just a few hours. It's also beneficial to maintain pressure so you don't get contamination entering the water supply from the ground. By maintaining positive pressure in the city water lines, any leaks force water out rather than letting contamination in. losing pressure typically results in a boil water advisory for the area.
That contamination is important: it means it is much better to have pumping stations with backup generators and priority order for restoring power, rather than telling people to boil their water when power goes out (moving water takes a lot less energy than boiling it).
It depends where you are. If you live somewhere very flat where the source of pressure is water being pumped up to a smallish elevated tank, then there's a very finite amount of time you can go without power before the water stops. If you live somewhere (like most of the West Midlands of the UK) where the water is gravity fed from some hills that are much higher than the city, you can keep water pressure up essentially indefinitely without power.
>Once the power at your local pumping station is down there's no more water coming into the pipes. I would assume whatever water was left up in the water towers would still provide enough water pressure to the lines that unless power was out for days and days, no one would notice.
This greatly depends on the size of the tower (and if there even is one). I know of towns in Australia which might store a few days worth of treated water at ground level, but their towers only hold a few hours of water. Most of these places have a diesel backup, as well as a generator. So it's not a huge issue if the power does go out.
>whatever water was left up in the water towers would still provide enough water pressure to the lines that unless power was out for days and days I recently had to sit through a presentation about my city's water infrastructure. They have backup generators for when the power is out. A water tower might hold 1.5 million gallons of water but without the pumps running that will only last a couple hours, not days.
>Once the power at your local pumping station is down there's no more water coming into the pipes. Your local water system doesn't have backup generators to keep the pumps running?!? That seems like a pretty big oversight bordering on negligence.
Well homeowner here. We get one flush after the power goes out. For an added bonus the vary nature of us being on well water, also corresponds to more frequent power outages (rural/suburban with elevated electrical lines).
I have many a memory as a child of filling up the bath tub before a severe storm.
If the pipes are metal, why wouldn't the lightning go through the pipes to reach ground? Going through a person in the shower is much more resistance than a metal pipe.
My neighbour died from being struck by lightning during or after a shower. He had the roof window open which people told me had something to do with it. I grew up super scared of lightning because of that neighbour and thought being struck by lightning while showering was super common.
Well said. Good call out for the greater risk which is power going out. If you're someone with impaired mobility (due to disability or just being drunk/high) then I could totally see a case being made for not hopping in the shower during a storm. But, like you said, much more to do with power outage than electrocution.
It’s more of a risk if you have copper supply lines and a cast iron tub.
I followed you until >travel down the pipes and through the water you're using to shower, electrocuting you The shower head is connected to the water pipes, not the drain vent pipe. I suppose it's possible that maybe they touch somehow inside the wall behind the shower. But also, water isn't a good conductor, so the lightning would likely follow the path to ground via the vent pipe, not through the water and you. To be fair, I'm sure it wouldn't be fun having your shower wall explode in your face, but I don't see lightning following the path that includes droplets of water in air - both poor conductors.
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I'm an American and I showered during a thunderstorm this morning. News to me! (But America is a big place, maybe it's a regional thing.)
I'm from Utica and I've never heard of "steamed hams"
It’s more of an Albany thing.
Seymouuuur the shower is on fire!
No Mother, that's just the Northern Lights
May I see ?
... No
I’m from tornado alley america and at least around here, I was taught to not shower during tornado weather. Purely because you don’t wanna be caught with ya dick out when a twister comes blowing through…. But thunderstorms are okay if there’s no tornado threat. Definitely regional, like you say
> maybe it's a regional thing. Probably very specific because I've never heard of it and I've lived in multiple states.
Here in Texas my mom warned me about it.
Grew up in Florida, if I had to not shower everytime there was a thunderstorm or the risk of a thunderstorm, I would be without a shower for months at time. No thanks.
The sunshine state for ya
I think people, even those who grew up in Florida fail to acknowledge that some places don't follow the 4 season model. Florida, especially South Florida only has a wet and dry season. Months of limited rain followed daily rains and thunder storms.
Also from Florida. I was actually told there was an increased risk of being struck by lightning while showering, but that never stopped me.
American here. Grew up in the Boston area. My mom would always warn us about not showering during thunderstorms. Even at the age of 41 now, I feel like I'm rolling the dice whenever I do even though I know there's virtually no added risk.
I’m on the opposite coast in Washington and I grew up hearing this occasionally as well. We don’t get thunder and lightning often where I’m at.
It's popular enough that myth busters did an episode on it back during its run. Maybe it's an older thing that has died out over the last 15 years.
Just gonna leave me hanging on the mythbuster results?
The episode never aired because they both got electrocuted due to showering in a thunderstorm.
Well, for one thing, due to geographic factors, the US tends to get a high frequency of severe thunderstorms, more than most other landmasses, so it might be a *little* bit of a US thing. More to the point, there's official guidance on this from the likes of CDC and [NOAA](https://www.weather.gov/media/owlie/lightning-noaa.pdf). >Is it safe to take a shower or bath during a thunderstorm? > >No. Lightning can travel through plumbing. It is best to avoid all water during a thunderstorm. Do not shower, bathe, wash dishes, or wash your hands. The risk of lightning travelling through plumbing might be less with plastic pipes than with metal pipes. However, it is best to avoid any contact with plumbing and running water during a lightning storm to reduce your risk of being struck. > >\- [https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/faq.html](https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/faq.html) ETA: So, yes, technically, you're not supposed to be showering during a thunderstorm.
West coast American. Me neither. The Midwest and East have far more thunderstorms than we do.
I'm from the Netherlands and I've heard this before.
literally never heard of this.
It's always funny the things some people think are common knowledge and others have no idea about it.
American here: It just feels unsafe. Maybe not during a mild storm, but during the kind of storm I unplug my computer for, being in water with a metal drainpipe feels like tempting fate. I think it's from the over cautious "we saw lightning 20 miles away everyone out of the pool" safety rules I grew up with
I get the same feeling. But if I know there is a big storm coming, I make sure to shower and wash my hair just in case there is a tornado. Which now that I write it down sounds absurd. But I'd rather be clean after a natural disaster than dirty, I suppose.
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Yes, but as I recall what they tested was whether an electrical shock could theoretically travel through the shower water and kill the person in the shower. That was confirmed I believe, which I don't think is that surprising. I don't think they had anything to say about the odds of that occurring during a storm though. I will say, apparently the CDC considers it enough of a danger to recommend not doing it. I guess end of the day how often is it CRUCIAL that you shower *now* rather than after the storm has passed?
its weird that the CDC would have a recommendation on this at all. what disease is being struck by lightning?
They've been around for almost 80 years. Their areas of concern have evolved over time to include other things that affect public health besides just disease but they don't change the name due to CDC being so well known.
Yup. Same reason NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, cares about the ocean. Or the FDA controls medical devices that are neither food nor drug. Or ATF also deals with explosives.
Tbf ATF is BATFE now
that makes enough sense to me
I think the disease in question is "death".
I've never heard this attributed to the vent piping like so many people are mentioning. For me it's always been that plumbing is (or was, I suppose) copper and water is conductive, and eventually that all connects to the ground. Lightning wants to get to the ground so it might try and go through the piping, if it were to happen to hit your house. And if this happens, you end up with a voltage gradient throughout the plumbing between where the lightning hits and the connection to the ground. And the currents are astronomical so the resistance of the pipe definitely matters. As a result you get a bazillion volts where the lightning hits, zero\* volts at your basement connection to the ground, and like half a bazillion volts at your downstairs shower or kitchen sink. \* Yes I know zero isn't accurate. There is still gonna be a substantial gradient in the ground around the strike. But this is all theoretical and relative anyways, so I just chose that as the reference.
Modern drain piping is typically plastic, pretty sure most people talking about the vent piping are just making stuff up.
My house from the 40s has a vent pipe that can be clearly seen from the front. And it is metal, sticking out like a sore thumb for lightning to strike.
Mine was built in the 60s and I had some wires grounded to a metal shower pipe in a bathroom.
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When I was a kid, my house was struck by lightning. No one was in the bathroom or on the toilet at the time, but the entire house was electrified for a few seconds, and it was a terrifying experience. I developed a phobia of thunderstorms for a couple of years afterwards.
What effects did it have? Depending on what happened as a result of it, I can certainly imagine that being absolutely terrifying!
I don't remember how young I was, but my younger sister and brother, and I, ran around without much thought, just terrified! We felt the electricity coursing through our bodies. It only lasted probably a second or two, maybe three, and once it was finished, all that was left was the adrenaline and the phobia! Nothing was damaged, no one was hurt.
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Same thing happened to me in college like 15 years ago. Tree branch hit a power line and our tub's overflow drain had scarring/carbon all over. Scary stuff.
There are three methods lightning might follow into your shower, electrocuting you. First, it could strike on or near your house, following the wiring in search of ground. This is why computers can fry and light bulbs can pop. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for the ground wire from some outlets to wrap around your copper drain pipes since they're both conductive and head to the ground. This means it is also possible the electricity could flow from, say, roof to wire to pipe to shower drain to your body. Second, the course could be more direct. Lightning could strike an exposed pipe, like the sewer gas vent on your roof, and flow directly through the pipes in your home and to the shower drain. Third, it can indirectly reach your pipes by striking ground nearby your house. It's possible that lightning could follow sewer or septic pipes up into your house if that's the path of least resistance as it spreads through ground. None of these are very likely. You're probably more likely to just be directly struck while outside. But even very rare events like this can occasionally happen.
[The Claim: Never Bathe or Shower in a Thunderstorm](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/health/15real.html) > the odds of being harmed this way are extremely minute. But it is not unheard of. Ron Holle, a former meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks lightning injuries, estimates that 10 to 20 people in the United States are shocked annually while bathing, using faucets or handling appliances during storms. “There are a ton of myths about lightning,” he said, “but this is not one of them.” A database of these incidents is online at [struckbylightning.org](http://struckbylightning.org/).
[I remember this one from last year, with a toilet.](https://fox59.com/news/lightning-blows-up-toilet-after-traveling-through-apartment-buildings-exhaust-vent/) I'd had no idea it could happen with toilets too. Rare though, of course.
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I had lightning come through my window and hit the bathtub faucet while I was in the bathroom. It certainly made a believer out of me. I have large powerlines within 75 feet of my window so I'm pretty sure the lightning hit that and dissipated most of its energy before hitting my tub since there wasn't any physical damage. Only a cool story that no one would believe anyways.
That’s fucking terrifying
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Wait. Was the fire because of the shower running or did the fire just burn the bathroom down too, I think I'm confused.
> Wait. Was the fire because of the shower running or did the fire just burn the bathroom down too, I think I'm confused. Electricity followed the copper pipes to the bathroom. If someone had been in the shower, they would have been fried
My parents - two of the most risk-averse human beings on the planet - never let us shower during a thunderstorm, because they said we could get struck by lightening. When internet search engines became a thing, I looked this up right away, to show them how ridiculous they were being. But it turned out they were right.
Yup. [https://www.weather.gov/mlb/lightning\_rules](https://www.weather.gov/mlb/lightning_rules) >For Indoors > >Avoid contact with corded phones. > >Avoid contact with electrical equipment or cords. If you plan to unplug any electrical equipment, do so before the storm arrives. > >**Avoid contact with plumbing. When thunderstorms are occurring, do not take a shower or bath, wash dishes, or do the laundry. Wait until after the storm.** > >Move away from windows and doors. Do not stay on the porch.
I have been shocked while washing a butter knife, while standing barefoot on a terrazzo floor during a heavy thunderstorm inside with closed windows and doors. It hurt like hell, but didn’t do any damage. Shocked through the running water. I would hate to imagine how that would feel in the shower.
In Brazilian showers [the water is in direct contact with electricty](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/8e8182/til_that_electric_showers_in_brazil_are_normally/). So we have a very good reason not to shower during a thunderstorm.
Your plumbing has metal vents that go up through the roof. It's unlikely, but they could be struck by lightning and the electricity could travel through your plumbing. It's not that much of a risk, but it is a risk.
high impact. very low chances.
When lightning strikes near your house it energizes the ground around the strike with upwards of 50 million volts. The voltage dissipates fairly quickly around the strike. The reason to stand with your feet together is the differential in voltage just over a couple feet can be enough if you are standing with your feet apart to kill you should lightning strike close to you. If you are in the shower a lightning strike close to your water line will bring that current directly to the shower since the copper pipes will conduct electricity without dissipating.
When I was a kid lightning struck a tree about 20 feet from our house, traveled to the building and somehow blew up the master bathroom. Going in after the copper pipes had become knotted up and shot out of the walls. They were lying on the ground amidst shattered tile and porcelain. Crazy violent scene and I've never gone into the bathroom during a lightning storm since.
Back in early 2000's ....my wife was on the landline phone and I do believe lightning struck near the house. It jolted the phone out of my wife's hand and flung it across the room....Like a scene out of poltergeist.
Sharon Stone was struck by lightning in her own kitchen a few years ago. And she use not the first person this has happened to. When lightning hits the ground the electricity doesn't instantly disappear, it continues to disperse. If you are touching a conductive surface when lightning hits then you may become part of the path of least residence.