Robert Besser
01 Aug 2022, 19:52 GMT+10
UTTAR PRADESH, India: Police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have said that seven people, mostly farmers, were killed by lightning in a village in the northern part of the state, bringing the death toll by lightning to 49 people in the state this week.
According to police officer Hem Raj Meena, the farmers, included four members of a family and some cattle grazers near the city of Kaushambi, had taken shelter under trees during a drenching monsoon rain when they were struck by lightning and died instantly.
Atate government spokesperson Shishir Singh said the local government subsequently issued new guidelines for how people can protect themselves during lightning storms.
"People are dying more from lightning than rain-related incidents, though this is the time when people typically die of floods or other rain incidents," Singh addd.
India's monsoon season runs from June through September.
Col. Sanjay Srivastava from the Lightning India Resilient Campaign, which works with the Indian Meteorological Department, said that since April lightning has killed nearly 750 people across India, including 20 people who died in eastern Bihar in the past two days and 16 in Madhya Pradesh state in central India earlier this month.
J P Gupta, director of the Meteorological Department, said this year's thunderstorms and lightning have increased due to rising pollution levels, stating, "High ground temperature leads to evaporation from water bodies that adds moisture to the atmosphere. The presence of aerosols due to air pollution creates favorable conditions for thunderclouds to trigger lightning activity."
Get a daily dose of Kolkata Sun news through our daily email, its complimentary and keeps you fully up to date with world and business news as well.
Publish news of your business, community or sports group, personnel appointments, major event and more by submitting a news release to Kolkata Sun.
More InformationManila, Philippines: Amidst plans to resume an investigation into the Philippines' bloody "War on Drugs," President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ruled ...
LONDON, England: Prosecutors and police have charged a 20-year-old man, arrested in December 2021 with a crossbow while on the ...
BERLIN: Germany: A debate is raging in Germany over whether it should decommission its three remaining nuclear power plants as ...
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: After being shut since March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, New Zealand's borders fully re-opened to ...
TEHRAN, Iran: This week, Iranian media reported that the country's border guards clashed with the Afghan Taliban in the latest ...
LONDON, UK - Myanmar's military has been accused of using Russian-made Yak-130 aircraft with ground attack capability against civilians to ...
DELHI, India: In a bid to bring transparency to the gold market, India, the world's second largest consumer of gold, ...
DELHI, India: India will ground all of its Soviet-era Russian MiG-21 fighter jets by 2025, according to reports in the ...
UTTAR PRADESH, India: Police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have said that seven people, mostly farmers, were killed ...
DELHI, India: Eleven years after its first attempt was curtailed by regulatory issues, Google Maps launched its Street View service ...
New Delhi [India], August 5 (ANI): Protests by opposition parties including Congress on issues like price rise and action of ...
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], August 5 (ANI): The Reserve Bank of India on Friday decided to keep inflation projection for the ...