April 7th, 1984 was a warm and humid day at Baltray Golf Links, north of Dublin. On that day 15 years ago, as three golfers walked down the fifth fairway in a heavy hail-shower, golf bags on their shoulders, one of them was struck by lightning.
The victim experienced extensive burns, lost parts of three fingers of his right hand, suffered ruptured eardrums and several perforations of the lower bowel - these last presumed to have been caused by a rapid expansion of the gas inside as the current surged through the body. Happily, the victim was able to resume his game a few months later, presumably a meteorologically wiser person for his pains.
Forty-five thousand thunderstorms occur every day, and over 16 million annually around the world. They are comparatively rare in northern latitudes - say north of 60 north - because it is seldom warm enough; they also occur rarely over deserts, because the air is too dry, and three times as many develop over land areas of the world as do over the sea; they thrive in the hot humid air of the southern latitudes, developing on up to 120 days a year in Central Africa, the Amazon basin, Florida and the East Indies.
Here in Ireland thunderstorms are uncommon enough by world standards, occurring at any particular spot on an average of only five or six days a year. In the midlands and east they occur most often in the summer months, between May and August, while in western areas they tend to be more a wintertime phenomenon.
Although lightning fatalities are not unknown in Ireland, they are comparatively rare. In the United States, for example, an average of 100 people are killed by lightning every year, and around 250 injured. In England and Wales, the average annual number of fatalities decreased from 20 in the 1850s to 13 by the end of the 19th century; it had fallen to 10 by the 1940s and 1950s, and reached its present level of slightly less than four in the 1980s. There is no reason to believe the pattern in Ireland to be very different.
The circumstances in which lightning strikes occur are also rather interesting. A study of 3,000 fatalities in the US revealed that nearly a third of the victims were struck by lightning in open fields; 17 per cent were under trees; 13 per cent on or near water; 6 per cent near tractors - and 4 per cent were playing golf.