Buzz
A reader reached out asking, “Is it really unsafe to shower during a thunderstorm? Or were my parents just joking around?”
In his 2007 book, Anahad O’Connor delivered a clear warning with the title Never Shower in a Thunderstorm. Typically, if lightning strikes a home or building, its residents are relatively safe. Electricity takes the easiest route to the ground, preferring to travel through materials with better conductivity. Metal frames, ducts, and plumbing are better conductors than humans, so lightning would typically pass through one of these and disperse into the earth.
However, if you're in the middle of a shower, bath, or even washing dishes at the sink, you increase the risk. Given the choice, your body could become a better conductor for electricity. Lightning often travels through the metal pipes in buildings, and the water in those pipes—while it may be fresh from the tap—contains impurities that help carry electricity. Moreover, when you’re wet, your body’s resistance to electricity is greatly reduced. If lightning strikes while you're near a pipe, faucet, or flowing water, the current might reach you, and that’s something you definitely want to avoid.
While unlikely, it's not impossible—your chances of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 775,000, according to the National Weather Service. However, you definitely don’t want to experience what happened to Josephine Martine, a woman from the UK who was literally “catapulted” out of her bathtub and across the bathroom when lightning traveled through the pipes and into the shower head she was holding.
