Because a Lightning strike seeks out the quickest route to the ground, it is unwise to shelter close to an isolated tall point, such as a tree, should you find yourself out in the open during a thunderstorm. The inside of a car is one of the safest places to shelter because if the car is struck, the electricity is conducted to the ground over the surface of the car. Of course, a secure building is the safest place to be during a storm.
The safest place to be is a place where the lightning will not strike you or where you will not come into contact with any of the stray power surge that happens.
Some people think that under a tree is safe because the lightning will hit the tree and not them. The electrons that are travelling through that lightning strike (they start on the ground and go up) are spread out in the wet grass. if you are standing in that grass you might feel quite a jolt. about 10 years ago, several people doing exactly that, taking shelter when a storm drifted over a soccer field where they were playing. One man died and several were taken to hospital. The rain hadn’t even started yet.
If you are in a car, you should know that rubber tires, especially when they are wet are not very good insulators. If the lightning strikes a car there is a good chance that bad things will happen. If you’re driving and you blow a tire, accident. If the lightning sparks the fuel, boom. If the lightning surges through the interior of the car, don’t touch anything near the car’s metal parts.
A house may be a decent place, especially one that has a lightning rod attached to a high point in the roof. That will be the point from which the lightning will jump up into the clouds and the electrons will travel up the very thick ground wire that runs from the lightning rod to a very big iron spike driven deep into the ground. A house that has no protection may not be so good. My mom told me the story of one thunderstorm she experienced as a kid in the ‘30s in a pre-electric house (yes, water from the well and oil lamps for light). A ball of lightning came in through her kitchen window and drifted over to the stove where it caused a lot of sparks to fly as it connected with the stove and stove pipe, which was running up and out the roof, acting like a non-grounded lightning rod. She had heard of someone who got in the path of that kind of thing and was badly burned.
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