Manila has been in full swing thunderstorm/rainstorm season. Floods, lightning, roads closed, the full works. It’s my first time witnessing a huge storm, in Auckland we had thunder occasionally, but nothing too crazy. This may explain why I am unknowledgable in this area.

The first sign of the storm was the fog that covered the whole area, except it wasn’t fog, it was clouds. For context, I live on the 2nd to top floor of my building, and it’s 40 stories tall. My dumbass thought it looked so epic, that I went to the roof to try and capture some videos on my brand new camera.

This is where my foresight may have been my downfall.

I got onto the roof and the view is incredible, I start taking videos. Suddenly I start feeling electricity on my head, and when I flip the camera around, my flyaway hairs are all sticking directly up. Maybe to a more knowledgeable person, they would understand what this means and run for their lives, but not me apparently! I sat there for a good 5 minutes admiring how my hair was sticking up and walking around with it. Eventually, I got a really bad feeling to go back inside, and when I did, that’s when the lightning started, and it was loud.

I got home and showed my family the cool video of my hair sticking up, but they, however, did not find it so cool. After some frantic google searches it turns out, and let me quote: “when your hair sticks up in a storm it means a powerful electric field has formed around you and a lightning strike is imminent”.

So… not my brightest moment. I realise now that I was a perfect target for lightning as I was standing very high up in the clouds. At least it makes for a good near-death story, not that I would ever want one of those. Well now I can add: Amy Tries Lightning!

Curious if you’ve experienced something similar, I’d never heard of it until now.