April 26, 2006 — There are at least five ways lightning can kill you, and the most maligned of these — a direct bolt from the blue — is probably the least common, say lightning researchers.

The five murderous ways of lightning are 1) directly from above, 2) indirectly by a person touching an object that's being struck by lightning, 3) from a "side-flash" from another person or object that's being struck directly, 4) through the ground from a nearby ground strike, or 5) from a "streamer" of lighting coming up from the Earth to meet lightning from above.

The first death by streamer was confirmed only a few years ago in North Carolina.

Most reports of death or injury by lightning are reported as direct strikes, which doesn't match the medical evidence, said Mary Ann Cooper, a medical doctor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a specialist in lightning-related injuries.

Cooper presented the latest on lightning's many ways of striking people at the meeting of the International Lightning Detection Conference in Tucson, Arizona, on Tuesday.

"Only a third of the survivors have severe burns at all," said Cooper.

Such burns suggest, but don't prove a direct strike. Yet in almost every incident of people being hit by lightning, it's reported as a direct strike. Why?

"People don't know about the other kinds," said Cooper. "So it's very over-reported."

Exacerbating that problem is the common phrase "struck by lightning," said lightning and severe weather meteorologist Ronald Holle of Vaisala, Inc., the scientific firm sponsoring the meeting and that owns and operates the National Lightning Detection Network. The phrase conjures a particular mental image that only corresponds with direct strikes, he explained.

In Holle's opinion, only three to five percent of human-lightning incidents are direct strikes. "That's very scarce," he said. Holle has studied historical lightning strike incidents in the United States as far back as the 1890s.

As for how many incidents belong in which category, nobody really knows for sure, said both Holle and Cooper, but they'd like to find out.

"I think one of the most common mechanisms is people involved in ground contact," said Holle, referring to a person merely standing near a spot on the ground where lightning is striking. "That's why you hear of so many stories of people being knocked off their feet or knocked out of their shoes."

It also is one of the reasons that experts tell people to run for a car, with its insulated rubber tires between you and the ground, if you're caught outdoors in a raging electrical storm.

In the United States, an average 67 people die from lightning strikes every year. In both 2004 and 2005, however, fewer than 35 people were killed by lightning, a trend that officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration credit in part to their stepped-up efforts to educate the public about lightning safety.

For the many more people who are struck and survive, they often suffer from long-term effects like memory loss, attention deficit disorder, sleep disorders, numbness, dizziness, stiff joints, fatigue, weakness, muscle spasms and depression, NOAA reports.