Article source for : Lightning bolt from the blue
Jun 22, 2007 Miami Herald story "Lightning kills man beneath cloudless sky":http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/147572.html
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With no rain or even clouds to warn him of the danger, death came literally out of the blue Thursday to a self-employed landscaper. The killer was a powerful bolt of lightning that cracked through perfectly clear skies.
Experts said Canales was killed by a weather phenomenon fittingly called a *''bolt from the blue''* or ''dry lightning'' because it falls from clear, blue skies. He was pronounced dead at South Miami Hospital.
Dan Dixon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said that when Canales was hit, a typical afternoon storm was forming but nowhere near the area. Weather data showed that lightning activity picked up north of Pinecrest shortly before 1 p.m., as a storm gathered momentum and swept through Coral Gables and then downtown. ''Most lightning will come from the base of a thunderstorm, inside that rain-shaft area,'' Dixon explained. ``But occasionally, what we call a bolt from the blue comes out of a thunderstorm still several miles away.''
The fair-weather bolts pack a bigger, deadlier punch and form differently. Most lightning bolts carry a negative charge, but ''bolts from the blue'' have a positive charge, carry as much as 10 times the current, are hotter and last longer. The bolts normally travel horizontally away from the storm and reach farther than typical lightning, then curve to the ground.
It's not the first time in South Florida ''bolts from the blue'' have proven deadly. In August 1988, a Norwegian couple vacationing in South Florida were struck while standing on a Fort Lauderdale beach. Witnesses said the sky was cloudless.
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