While the odds of being hit are extremely low, lightning is unpredictable. It can lurk far from where you think danger lives. Floridians are trained to listen for thunder. The savvier among us know to count the seconds between seeing lightning and hearing a rumble (for every five seconds, the lightning is one mile away). But lightning defies those expectations. It can strike 10 miles away from a cloud.

A Lucky Strike

Mr. Church said he couldn’t hear any thunder from the jetty. It was drizzling. And yet he got hit — hard. As he lay on his back in the dark on Jan. 7, Mr. Church, a martial arts teacher, tried to move but couldn’t — a common reaction to lightning. It short-circuits your body. After a time, he flipped himself onto his stomach but couldn’t get up. He felt a surge of liquid pour out of his belly. Blood.

Then he slowly crawled to his tackle box and tried to open it. That’s when he noticed two of his fingers — the right ring finger and pinkie — were almost entirely gone. He used his thumbs to snap it open, grabbed his phone and called 911.

“I just got hit by lightning,” he told the 911 operator. “I lost two fingers. They are completely gone,” he added later between moans. “Everything is starting to hurt a little bit now.”