I love Google. It’s like having the entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica at your finger tips. Well, okay it’s like having the entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica if volumes A through Mecklenburg were written by idiots at your finger tips, but that’s what makes using the popular search engine so much fun. That and the photos of naked guys. But even with the idiots’ input, the internet is still an amazing source of knowledge and information. And whenever some weird thought pops into my mind within 0.27 seconds I can find 3,890,000 results, 10% of which might have something to do with my search term. And another 10% clues me into some even stranger topic that I had no idea of. Like bubbling. Trust me, you don’t want to Google that.

Told you so.

And speaking of strange sources of knowledge on the internet (I’m not digressing, I’ll tie this in here in a minute) I have to say I’ve been enjoying reading ChristianPFC’s blog. Granted, I often shake my head in puzzlement. But his is a world unfamiliar to many and his voice is certainly unique. As is his subject matter. Like the recent page-long verbatim transcript of a series of Line conversations he had with a local guy he has no interest in. Christian is kinda the Thailand gay sex tourists’ Joaquin Phoenix. Only stranger. With a heavy Teutonic sensibility. But just when I start thinking a few Oxycontin might help make me to make sense out of his posts, he throws one in about some off the beaten path historical or cultural site he wandered out to while looking for sex. Thailand and Thai culture often perplexes me. And Christian’s blog does a great job of imparting that same level of confusion and bewilderment. I think it’s a testament to his skills as a blogger.

He recently posted a piece about um, I forget. But as usual wherever it was he visited ultimately ended up being about his never-ending quest to get laid. And in this case that involved perving out at a public swimming pool. During his report on whether that locale was a plus or minus for spotting the type of guys he’s interested in (sans skin temperature readings) he mentioned that during his visit it began to rain. And that management of the pool then closed the amenity down, forcing everyone to get out of the water. That in turn reminded me of the familiar sight in Hawaii of people swimming in the ocean running for the shore when it would begin to rain. I never could understand that. If you are in the water, you are already wet. And it’s not like in either Thailand or Hawaii that a rainstorm drops the temps down to freezing. If anything it gets warmer. So what gives?

I’d intended on doing a quick post today about that phenomenon. ‘Cuz any excuse for some snark is a good one in my book. But then, unlike the journalists at FOX News, I thought I should at least check to make sure those idiots didn’t know something that I didn’t. And within 0.28 seconds Google provided me with 39,500,000 explanations for their strange behavior. Huh. I’ll have to check to see what Google can do about explaining ChristianPFC one of these days.

Assuming the issue is one of safety and not just an unlemming-like stampede away from the cliff, the internet provides an emphatic maybe as the answer to the question of is it dangerous to be in the ocean during a rainstorm. Once you discount the opinions of those who are concerned they may drown under that climatic scenario, things become a bit more cloudy. It all depends on which website you decide to visit. Much like the spin on news depends on which television channel’s news team you prefer to tell you exactly what you want to hear. What the majority of sites seem to agree on is that the concern is not about getting wet but rather about being struck by lightning. Not that every rain squall comes with lightning. But it’s kinda like dealing with zombies. Even if it only looks like a zombie, your best bet is to get the hell out of Dodge.

The National Lightning Safety Institute seems to be the authoritative voice regarding swimming during storms; it says doing so is a no-no. Unfortunately instead of issuing a stern warning, the institute went with a nursery rhyme: “If you can see it, flee it; if you can hear it, clear it.” Not quite up to Mary Had A Little Lamb standards, and if you are in a swimming pool that could just as easily apply to someone farting or peeing in the pool. But the institute’s message does clarify the danger is not with the rain itself, but that thunder and lightning can develop quickly and cause a serious risk.

The science guys at The USA Today concur, proclaiming “Swimming during a thunderstorm is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Lightning regularly strikes water, and since water conducts electricity, a nearby lightning strike could kill or injure you.” While that’s a pretty specific warning, I’m not sure if swimming during a thunderstorm is one of the most dangerous things you can do; getting into an argument with a ladyboy hooker on Sukhumvit, for example, is much more likely to cause immediate physical injury. And while their claim that water conducts electricity sounds good, real science guys know pure water does not.

The folks who troll Wiki.Answers.com (aka people who have been banned from posting comments on Yahoo) assumed the danger of lightning was real (‘cuz who hasn’t seen Caddyshack) and instead wanted to know: How close to lightning do you have to be in the water to feel it? Unfortunately the most popular answer was submitted by someone who had been too close to that lightning and accomplished nothing more than showing when that happens you end up spending your days answering stupid questions on Wiki.Answers.com.

Nonetheless that makes the vote 3 to 0 for fleeing like a straight boy who finds himself in a gay men’s lockeroom. But swimming like hell for the shore does not necessarily mean you’ll survive your day at the beach. That will depend on karma, luck, and how much merit you’ve been making at the local wat. When lightning strikes water, it spreads across the surface rather than plunging to the ocean’s depths. And fries anything on that surface. Which could include your body when you are busy dog-paddling for safety. Ooops. My bad. That is why the general rule among scuba divers is to make like a fish and stay under the water when lightning strikes. So as a swimmer, your best course of action is to look for someone wearing a set of air tanks and quickly make friends. Of course if the two of you sucking air depletes his supply during the lightning storm you then should probably unfriend him ‘cuz he’ll be trying to get out of the water with a large metal cylinder strapped to his back. And that tends to never end well.

So the general consensus is if lightning begins its show while you are out swimming you should act like an extra in Godzilla and run like hell for safety. Which probably is not where most of your fellow waders are headed. Those who participate in the phenomenon of getting out of the water when it rains tend to head for the nearest pseudo-dry spot, like under a beach umbrella or coconut tree. But as powerful as lightning is as a form of energy, it’s basically lazy and tends to strike whatever is the easiest to reach, which is usually the tallest structure in the area. Like a beach umbrella or coconut tree. On the plus side, if it does zap the covering your ignorant ass headed for, it will dry your off. See? Every cloud does have a silver lining.

If instead of having spent the day picking up boys off the beach you decided to perv out over the swimsuit-clad bodies at the local swimming pool like ChristianPFC did, and a lightning storm cause management to close down the pool, like ChristianPFC you’ll probably head for the lockeroom ‘cuz nothing gets the blood pumping like a close call with death and there’s always the chance one of those guys in the lockeroom’s blood will be pumping somewhere useful. If that’s the case, you’d better be into quickies. Because the shower room is not a safe place to be for you or your victim.

Don MacGorman, a physicist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, says that while the area of a swimming pool is small, and is not usually directly hit by a lightning strike, the area affecting a pool is quite large, making it an easy target. This area includes the surrounding power and telephone lines, the plumbing around the pool, and water lines inside the bathhouse and other structures. These are usually unsafe places during a thunderstorm because the current from a lightning strike will travel easily through the standing water, showers, and other plumbing. Since the pump, lights and other facilities have power lines linked to the plumbing, a hit to any part of a pool complex can affect all of it. Which could include you if you were letting your little brain doing the thinking once again.

The New York Times adds an additional warning about whiling away the time during a lightning storm with the guy you cornered in one of the shower cubicle in that lockeroom. Which is don’t. Get a hotel room for Christ’s sake. The esteemed paper turned to Ron Holle, a former meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks lightning injuries and who estimates that 10 to 20 people in the United States are shocked annually while bathing or using faucets during storms. He says metal pipes are not only excellent conductors of electricity, but they also carry tap water laden with impurities that help conduct electrical current (which at least got that water conducting electricity thingy right, unlike the guys at The USA Today).

Holle explains that during a storm, a protected building acts somewhat like a metal cage. Electricity from a lightning strike is conducted around you and eventually dissipates into the ground. So there is no real risk unless you touch something connected to plumbing. Like the guy you are molesting who is standing under the showerhead. Holle says the odds of being harmed this way are extremely minute. But it is not unheard of. And Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, who runs the Lightning Injury Research Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, quantifies just how unheard of those injuries are by providing a database of people who have been shocked and/or killed washing dishes, doing laundry, and sitting in bathtubs during storms at Struck By Lightning, a website devoted to memorializing those who went mano y mano with lightning and lost.

Of course while the danger of being hit by lightning at the beach steals all the thunder, there are other dangers associated with swimming during a storm too. Some are even greater and more deadly than the terrors faced daily by beach boys at Pattaya’s Dongtan Beach. And I think you know what I mean. The runner-up is that rains can cause bacteria and other harmful matter to be washed into the ocean and waterways. The L.A. Times says someone on their staff read someone else’s news article about a report of a study that said three days after rain, beach water can still make swimmers ill. So the on-line edition of the paper suggests to err on the side of caution and stay out of the water for five days after a rainfall even though every health and public safety professional the original source contacted for advice on this matter replied, “No comment.”

Encountering a flesh-eating bacteria that decided to go for a swim after a downpour is not as of much of a concern to those using a swimming pool. But then since even Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte admit that Olympic swimmers going for the gold still take time out to pee in the pool, and a recent survey seconded that motion showing that 1 in 5 adults admit they too have let it flow while swimming, it’s not like swimming pool fans are not used to wallowing in other people’s urine. But it does beg the question: Is it safe to bubble in the water during a thunder storm? Google doesn’t have much to say on that subject. Yet. But the NSA just added another page to my file.

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