I'll grant it's difficult to think rationally when your skull is being pelted with baseball-sized hail, but I should think the best strategy in this situation would be to wade deeper into the water and then squat to get your head 6-8" below the surface.
Photo credit Nikita Dudnik/AP via the Washington Post.
Addendum: Video - of the same storm/same beach - here.
Where is this beach? I don't even.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly from when I first saw this video several months back, it is somewhere in Russia.
DeleteThe USA Today article claims that it occurred in Novosibirsk, Russia. If so the body of water must be either the reservoir formed where the Novosibirsk Hydro Power Plant holds back the Ob River or the River itself.
Delete".....wade deeper into the water and then squat to get your head 6-8" below the surface."
ReplyDeleteWorks well if you've got a snorkel. Or better yet, an aqua lung. Lacking that, you'd have to come up for air at best every 30 to 45 seconds which would expose your face to a possible direct hit. Unless you could manage to use your forearms as a shield - which would hurt like hell but still be better than taking a direct shot in the snoot.
Previously on TYWKIWDBI: "In 1942 a British forest guard in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons. All the bodies dated from 850 A.D. - and they may have been killed by a hailstorm." Details at Atlas Obscura.
ReplyDeleteWhile searching death by hailstones, I found a video of this same incident. Have appended it to the post.
DeleteYou have to take the risk of lightning into consideration though.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you do have to come up for air occasionally. If you get knocked unconscious in the water, your chance of survival is much lower than if you were knocked unconscious on the land.