An Electrifying Experience

Journal 11:Sorry for the lateness, the journals slipped out of my mind.  Anyways, this incident occurred four years ago.  During this point, I was still in swimming and my brothers and I were taking private lessons on that particular Saturday.  If you may recall this was during the forty days and forty nights of incessant, ceaseless rain.  Storm clouds amassed especially near Ala Moana stretching to Iolani.  At this point in time, my dad oddly recalled his hair standing on end and the forecasted high pressure system the news reported held true.  Then the rain began pouring extremely hard and we witnessed lighting and thunder.  From what I learned in physics during these lightning storms the underbelly of the clouds become highly negatively charged, and due to this highly negatively charged electric field the cloud contains, the ground itself becomes polarized.  In addition lightning has twenty-five Coulombs of charge and this build up with the polarized buildings and ground, the charged bottom of the clouds(lightning) is attracted to the positively charged surface of the ground and buildings and is drawn to them and strikes them as lightning.  In my experience lightning came extremely close hitting the building opposite the workout room and I thought I saw it strike the water ten minutes after we had gotten out because my instructor ended the class due to the weather.  Intense? I thought so, those days of rain were chaos and crazy.  Ok, enjoy life, shock yourself and friends with the Van De Graaff generator.