Gabrielle Toupin summited Mount Habritch in British Columbia, Canada this summer and didn’t realize until later that she’d had a close call. She and her hiking partner realized that when Toupin raised her arm, there was a buzzing noise—static electricity. The noise disappeared when she lowered her arm and came back as soon as she lifted it again. The hikers took a video of the strange phenomenon to research later. They felt like something was off, so they quickly left the summit after recording the video. Turns out, Toupin had witnessed one of the signs of an impending lightning strike. She shared her video to Instagram as an educational tool, and it went viral.
The video will make the hairs on your arms stand up. First, you see Toupin in her gear, on the peak of a mountain amidst gray weather. She lifts her arm, and the buzzing sound feels other-worldly. She lowers her arm, it stops, she raises it, it starts. She lifts both arms, and the sound intensifies. Toupin has a slight smile on her face while doing this, but the caption she wrote after the fact demonstrates that she now understands the danger she and her hiking partner were in.
“Turns out, that buzzing is a sign of static electricity in the air, which can happen before lightning strikes,” Toupin wrote in her Instagram caption. “Even if it doesn’t look like a storm, being up high on a mountain puts you closer to that kind of danger. If you ever hear buzzing or feel your hair standing up, it’s time to get off the summit ASAP.”
‘Common Sense’?
In response to comments that came flooding in on her video, some of them not so nice, Toupin wrote: “This video came from my first encounter with this phenomenon; I had never heard of it before. While some think it’s common sense, it’s not common knowledge for everyone. [. . .] I felt it was important to share this with others who might not know (as I did at the time of that recording).”
We think it’s great that Toupin shared her experience to hopefully help keep others safe.
Watch a hiker experience static electricity on a mountaintop here: