"Like nearly all folk-lore," replied the Forecaster, "there's a mighty good reason for that superstition. Folk-lore, after all, is merely keen observation reduced to a saying or a story. It is true that the oak-tree is a black witch so far as lightning is concerned and that the beech and alder are white witches. The proportion of trees struck by lightning has often been counted and for every fifty-four oaks struck, only one beech, or birch, or maple or alder is struck. Elms are fairly dangerous, being forty to the beech's one, and pines are less so, their ratio being fifteen. Not only this, boys, but a good deal depends on the way in which a tree is struck. An oak-tree may be riven into splinters, showing the terrible resistance that it gives to the stroke. A beech-tree, usually, is killed outright, yet shows but little outward injury. The oak has resisted the current, it is a bad conductor; the beech has allowed the current to flow directly to the ground.
Branch Lightning.
Copyright by H. E. Clark, Indianapolis. Courtesy of U.S. Weather Bureau.
Multiple Flash.
Courtesy of General Electric Co., Schenectady, N. Y.
"So, boys, if you are in a mixed forest and stand beneath a tree, the figures show that you are fifty-four times as likely to be struck with lightning when standing beneath an oak, instead of a beech. Not only that, but if the oak be struck, the lightning may jump from the tree to you more surely than it would from a beech-tree.