Lightning!

Nov 07, 1995 on PBS at 9:00 PM

Summary

Lightning! takes you on a high-voltage trip into the most electrically charged weather in the world--culminating in a dazzling lightning show set to music that rivals the most extraordinary fireworks display. The program also visits with some of ligh... (more)tning's tragic victims who thought they were out of harm's way. Lightning's fleeting rivers of electricity strike Earth 6,000 times a minute; jolt every commercial airplane one to two times a year; wipe out power to entire cities; hit 1,000 people annually; and account on average for more deaths than hurricanes and tornadoes put together. Join the scientists as they tempt nature by creating the world's tallest lightning rod, a wire leading thousands of feet into storm clouds, which triggers awe-inspiring thunderbolts a few hundred feet from the observers--and creates a chunk of "petrified" lightning. "I think lightning fascinates everyone," says "stormchaser" Dan Davis. "It's a personification of the intensity, the chaos and the unpredictability of nature."

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Season 22 Episode 12

Oct 31, 1995

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Hunt for the Serial Arsonist
Season 22 Episode 14

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