COLUMBIA, S.C. — Baseball season is back in the Midlands! Thousands of people attend Columbia Fireflies games each season and while their goal is for you to enjoy the crack of the bat, a crack of thunder could cause some issues for those in attendance.
According to research published by Chris Vagasky in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Weather, Climate, and Society, lightning occurring in and around baseball stadiums might a bit more common than you think.
Truist Field in Atlanta (the closest MLB stadium to Columbia) saw almost 3 thousand lightning strikes within 8 miles over the span of 2016 to 2019.
That is quite a bit of lightning! All of these strikes led to the Atlanta Braves being the team that held the most games from 2015-2019 that saw lightning strikes around game time. 46 games in total in fact, the only team with more were the Colorado Rockies with 50 games.
RELATED: Local Forecast
Looking locally, South Carolina sees about the same out of lightning every year as Georgia. Roughly speaking, the Palmetto State sees anywhere from 16 to 64 lightning strikes hit every square kilometer. This of course, poses an issue for summertime activities like baseball games.
“Once the game starts it’s actually the umpires call so they have that but we try to keep them informed and if there is something coming in quickly that they may not see or hear we are going to let them know.”
Brad Shank, Team President of the Columbia Fireflies, says their priority is to keep all the players and fans as safe as possible when storms roll in.
“When something pops up quickly which does happen in those cases obviously we try to get the tarp on the field as quickly as possible… The other thing we do in those situations is we obviously have people shelter in place if they are not going to have time to get to their car.”
Shanks says that in many cases if they know weather is not going to be ideal beforehand, they will start paying attention to the forecast so they have an idea of how to handle things in advance.
As for you knowing in advance, the News 19 Weather Team will be giving the latest forecast for the Fireflies each home game this season so make sure to tune in!