Lightning often strikes twice in the same spots and global warming is a scare tactic dreamed up by the media, of which he was a member.
Those were just some of the tidbits offered up by meteorologist Art Horn during a recent lecture at the Oxford Senior Center.
Horn is a native of Groton and is a graduate of Lyndon State College.
His interest in weather as a child lead to a career in radio followed by a 25-year career in television with CBS and NBC stations throughout the country including WVIT Channel 30 in New Britain during the early 1990s.
Horn narrated a one-hour slide show presentation to more than 50 seniors sharing folklore, sayings and little known facts about the environment.
On global warming, Horn said the earth’s temperature has been fluctuating normally for 10,000 years.
He said the concept of global warming is a creation of Al Gore and the major media outlets that believe good news is bad news.
“They are looking for stories to tell. Just because the computers say temperatures are rising, we are not experiencing global warming,” he said. “Computers have no idea what is going on.”
Not everyone agrees with Horn’s position on the matter.
Horn warned that the presence of thunder and lightning means to take shelter, and stay away from open fields.
“If you are close enough to hear the thunder, the lightning is close enough too,” he said.
Horn advised people to count the seconds in between lighting flashes and divide by five, which will give the distance in miles from the source.
Horn said one of the biggest myths is that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. He said lightning has a preference for high places like TV towers; steeples and skyscrapers, noting that the Empire State Building is struck by lightning more than 100 times a year.
