It’s so oppressively hot, even the insects are not moving. If you’re lucky enough to be near water, then you might get a breeze.
Weather like this is conducive to a thunderstorm, so if you have to get to shelter, how much time will you have?
If you see lightning try to notice the color. White light is generally an indicator that the storm is headed your way. Yellow or reddish orange light indicates dust-filled air, which sometimes protects you from the oncoming storms.
With lightning, my rule is if I can see it, I get to shelter ASAP.
Lightning is necessarily followed by thunder. You can see lightning from a greater distance than you can hear thunder.
So if you don’t hear thunder, it means the storm is more than 10 miles away from you.
If you hear thunder, how many seconds are there between the lightning and the time you hear thunder?
Divide the number of seconds by five to get the distance of the storm in miles. Light travels faster than sound, so if you can hear thunder, the storm is likely within 10 miles.
A reliable indicator of where lightning has struck in the past is a wound running the length of a tree trunk. Look for the exposed heartwood on a recently struck tree or the dark scar on a tree hit years ago. Some naturalists believe that certain species such as oak are struck by lightning more often than beech.
I’m going to have to count the species and number of lightning-struck trees on my hikes, to see that for myself, just as soon as the thunderstorms pass.
