How to Keep Safe in a Storm
During a Storm Outside

• Always make sure you make a lightning safety plan with your parents or your group.
• Before going on a long hike or being outside for a long time, check the weather  forecast for the day.
• If you hear thunder, then it is dangerous and you need to find a safe place.
• If you and a friend are outside and you see your friends hair start to stand up or you feel  prickles
  on your skin, you are in danger. That means a lightning strike is building up close by and can
  strike any time.
• Know where to go if a storm approaches, inside a building or in a car are the best areas.

• If you are caught in a thunderstorm, try to find a low place to stay in until the storm is over, like a ditch, but don’t stay where there is standing water.
• If you cannot find a shelter, get in to the “lightning safety position”, squat down near the ground with your heels touching and put your hands over your ears.
• If someone is hit by lightning, find an adult right away and call 911.

During a Storm, Inside Your Home

• Lightning travels through certain objects in your home so you want to be careful to stay away from anything metal.
• Do not stand near the windows.
• Do not take a shower or bath.
• Don’t use the phone, even cell phones can hurt your ears if lightning hits and travels through the line and makes a loud “pop”.
• Stay away from a metal stove or fireplace.
  

What to do at sporting events.
If you are on a sport team and there is a thunderstorm during a game, what should you do? Should you tell your coach or the person in charge, that the team should get off the field? If the coach says it is just a little rain and not to worry about it, should you leave anyway and take shelter? This is a serious question. You could get kicked off the team if you leave, but your life is more important than the game. In 1999,
a whole football team was injured by lightning in Colorado. My advice is to discuss this question with your parents and with your coach and team before the season begins.
How far away can you hear the thunder from a lightning stroke? It depends a lot on how much noise is going on around you. (It's much noisier at a ball game, for instance.) You've probably heard that you can use the "counting method" to tell how far away a storm is by counting the number of seconds between a flash and the arrival of the thunder. THAT ISN'T TRUE!
The risk of using this method to tell if you're in danger from a storm is that you can usually only hear thunder that is three or four miles away. Since the average stroke of lightning is twice that distance, you can be in direct danger from the next stroke of lightning without ever hearing any thunder.
In fact, most people struck by lightning say they never heard any warning thunder before it happened.
The ThunderBolt® Storm & Lightning Detector and other products can prevent this problem by detecting the storm long before the lightning can reach your location. This gives you plenty of time to go to safety without waiting to hear thunder.

Download Activities
Click on the images, download to your computer the image files to print and color.

Click Here for More Free Printable Coloring Pages
of Weather.