Five days after being struck by lightning, 16-year-old Lane Hudson was doing well Saturday.

The Bryan High School student remembers everything before Tuesday's lightning strike and a few things afterward, said his mom, Necie.

He was still in the hospital Saturday but had been sitting up and talking, she said.

"The main thing right now we're dealing with is his short-term memory," she said. "But they said that was normal."

Hudson's club was struck by lightning as he was about to swing during a golf lesson at Traditions Golf Course. He was resuscitated by a golf pro and taken to St. Joseph Regional Health Center, where he was initially listed in critical condition.

Hospital officials refused to release his condition Saturday but said he was in fair condition Friday.

Richard Orville, Texas A&M's head of atmospheric sciences and a lightning expert, said people should seek shelter at even the faintest rumble of thunder.

"When you see lightning or hear thunder, take cover," he said.

About 500 people are injured by lightning strikes each year, Orville said, and 80 to 90 people are killed every year.

"Very often, a strike will not kill instantly but put the heart into a fibrillation," he said. "If you give first aid quickly to the person, you can get the heart back to normal beating."

Orville said lightning is a year-round danger in Texas, and Houston has twice as much lightning as the Brazos Valley because it has large amounts of the two things needed for the development of thunderstorms: heat and moisture.

Texas ranks second in the number of deaths from lightning strikes, with 53 deaths between 1990 and 2003, according to the National Lightning Safety Institute. Florida had 126 deaths in that time.

Though it couldn't have been predicted Tuesday that lightning would strike Hudson, lightning's movement can be followed through a storm by its electromagnetic signals, said Orville, who has been studying lightning for 35 years.

Traditions officials have not commented on the incident -- even in general terms about the course's safety precautions. The course does not have lightning-detection sensors, Bryan Fire Department officials said.

But at Texas A&M, horns are scattered throughout campus and along the golf course, said Rick Kahlich, the university's head golf professional.

"The way the system works, it's a prediction system. It's not a detector," he said.

The system can predict lightning within a five-mile area, he said, and horns blast a 15-second warning.

"It's about an eight-minute buffer," he said.

Kahlich said the protection system also includes shelters throughout the golf course. That way, he said, if golfers are deep into the course when the horns sound, they can make it to safety rather than attempting to reach a vehicle.

The system protects everyone, he said, by keeping staff members out of the danger that comes with warning people of oncoming storms.

"Once the horn sounds, the golfers are on their own," Kahlich said. "They have to know good enough to come out of the rain."

Curtis Bingham, College Station parks operations superintendent, said there are 10 lightning detectors at parks within the city.

The city's Central Park has a system that activates sirens when it detects lightning. Detection units are also used at Wolf Pen Creek Park and Amphitheater, Bee Creek Park, W.A. Tarrow Park, Thomas Park, Veterans Park, Sandstone Park, Pebble Creek Park, Jack and Dorothy Miller Park and Southwood Athletic Park, he said. The units send one long horn blast as a warning and three short horn blasts when the threat has dissipated.

Bart Humphreys, College Station Fire Department spokesman, said the Brayton Fire Training Field run by the Texas Engineering Extension Service is also equipped with lightning detectors.

Darrell Lovelette, Bryan's parks and recreation director, said the city has a lightning predictor at the Bryan Aquatic Center that also covers Bryan High School. The minute the alarm goes off, he said, the Aquatic Center's staff members call other city pools to alert them of the possible danger.

"We clear the pool a lot of times even without it going off," he said. "You suspect anything, you clear the pool for 30 minutes until you don't hear or see anything."

The city's other park facilities don't have lightning-prediction equipment, which isn't unusual, Lovelette said.

"The only time I ever hear of a concern regarding that is around water or golf courses. Every golf course usually has its own procedures, though."

Trey Stiles, owner of Bryan Municipal Golf Course, which does not have a lightning detector, said there had never been a clear idea of the best course of action to take regarding lightning.

"Our position is lightning is an act of God," he said. "It's too unpredictable. I've had golf courses in the past where we asked people to come in, and they basically ignore you and they put themselves and our staff in risk. We looked at this really hard, and there is just no clear consensus."

No one responded to messages left at Miramont Country Club's golf course.

Pebble Creek Country Club's course officials would not comment on procedures in regard to dangerous weather conditions.

Nick Venditto, Briarcrest County Club's assistant golf professional, said a horn blows any time dangerous conditions are detected. There are also shelters throughout the course that golfers can use until a storm passes, he said. Course officials constantly track the weather through Web sites, he said.

According to a 35-year study by the National Lightning Safety Institute, 5 percent of lightning strikes occur on golf courses, while 8 percent are water-related and 27 percent occur in open fields and recreational areas.

Lightning can reach 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit -- five times hotter than the sun's surface -- and can travel 90,000 miles per second, according to the institute.

According to NASA, men are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than women -- though experts aren't sure why.

• Cassie Smith's e-mail address is cassie.smith@theeagle.com.

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Posted by: Rosemary Vollmar On: 7/13/2008

Comment Title: Who owns the Bryan Muni. Golf Course?
This article states that a Trey Stiles owns the Bryan Municipal Golf Course. If Mr. Stiles IS the owner of the course, when did the City of Bryan make this illegal sale. I don't remember having a city-wide election with this on the ballot.

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