UnderstandBlue
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Wow thanks for those images. I still think there would have been evidence on their bodies of a lightning strike. Warning - some lightning injury photos here.
It says you could have moderate injury, but I didn't find where it says there would be none. The ocular info is interesting. "Lightning has been known to cause cataracts for almost three hundred years. "
Lightning and the Forensic Pathologist
It says you could have moderate injury, but I didn't find where it says there would be none. The ocular info is interesting. "Lightning has been known to cause cataracts for almost three hundred years. "
Lightning and the Forensic Pathologist
MOO
The weather data from that day just keeps providing solid information that lightning was the culprit.
All the images attached below are from https://weather.us/satellite/mariposa/satellite-superhd-15min/20210815-2050z.html . On the attached satellite images, the family's final location on the trail is the red star and the El Portal weather station is the blue dot, both plotted to the best of my ability.
The family was underneath cloud cover between 1:30pm and 2:50pm PDT that day. Significantly, the El Portal weather station was not (yes, I mapped that station's location). So the temperatures recorded at El Portal between those hours (107F-109F) become inapplicable to this family, IMO.
Moreover, that cloud contained a thunderhead. It was a storm cloud (I'm not a meteorologist so please don't take me at my word - this case has taught me so much from all the research, but I'd encourage others to look into this stuff themselves, obviously) Radar images taken from the same timeframe show the precipitation reflectivity contained in the cloud's tower, and how it intensifies within 22 minutes and then dissipates almost as quickly.
They were directly under a storm cell for over an hour. Lightning could have gotten them in these mid-day storms, or later during the evening ones. But two storms passing over this family in one day, significantly increases the odds they encountered lightning.
I'm sure LE has much better weather data than this, and has had it for much longer. They've been connecting the same dots way more quickly and efficiently than I am. If their investigation finds that it was the mid-day storm that hit this family, that's even more tragic because it wasn't forecast like the evening storms were. They could not have had forewarning, even if they'd done everything right and double-checked the weather. It would have been a true "freak" summer storm that caught them off guard.
MOO