Dug up some info on (dodging) lightning.
=> You don't need to be struck by lightning to be killed by lightning:
"A lightning storm over a mountain or hill may unleash a lightning bolt that travels sideways up to 10 miles literally reaching over the hill and striking you. In your location the sky may be completely blue, and sunny, without any clouds in the sky at all! Suddenly you may be struck and injured or killed by a lightning bolt literally out of the blue. In America every year 25% of all thunderstorm related deaths and injuries are caused by a lightning bolt striking someone ahead of the main storm, sometimes in clear and sunny areas. 65% of all thunderstorm lightning accident deaths and injuries are caused by people being struck by lightning bolts after the thunderstorm has passed.
Only 10% of lightning injuries are caused by people outdoors directly under a thunderstorm."
=> There are warning signals:
"Lightning high voltage discharges do not occur at the speed of light. A small initial discharge (Trichel pulse) emanates from the base of a thundercloud and is usually 10 to 30 meters long. Trichel pulses, commonly called stepped leaders or dart leaders, continue to form off the end of each lightning step leader and continue to step downward towards the earth. This lightning stepped leader and dart leader process occurs over a period of time measured in milliseconds which causes the lightning bolt to be totally formed in ¼ to ½ second. In the dryer, western areas of the United States, lightning strikes spawn dozens of destructive forest fires every year. "These lightning stepped leaders are not straight lines, always taking the path of least resistance through the air, which is not always the shortest distance between two points, thus producing the highly erratic zig-zag pattern we see in lightning bolts. At the same time the stepped leaders and dart leaders are forming off the based of a lightning thundercloud, lightning stepped leaders of opposite charge begin forming off objects on the ground and move upward in 10 to 30 meter long steps toward the cloud.
=> The main bolt travels from ground to sky:
"When these step leaders connect the main spark forms and a very heavy current begins to flow. This is the bright discharge we see as a lightning bolt. Currents of hundreds of thousands of Amperes produce an ionized lightning bolt channel approximately 2 inches in width and up to 10 miles in length. These long spark discharges do not always go directly between the earth and the clouds. Sometimes the lightning discharges can reach out behind or ahead of the main lightning clouds at distances up to 10 miles. A unique property of lightning bolts is that the main, powerful heavy lightning stroke currents do not travel from the cloud to the ground.
The main lightning current travels from the ground upwards to the cloud."
Taken from
http://www.resonanceresearch.com/lightning.htm