How a lightning strike can kill, even when it misses you.

[CMF]

Totally agree with treewalking...in my experience lightning/hail storms up high and above treeline between July-Sept in CO are no joke.

Curious, is most of that lightning up there cloud to cloud or cloud to ground? I was up high most of August on a sheep hunt. Most of the lightning I saw/heard never seemed real close. This compared to lightning on the gulfcoast and out in the boat fishing, where we've actually layed our poles down, beached the boat and crawled into the marsh and spread out. I feel like I've been really close to lightning at least a dozen times in MS. Guys I talked to had warned me of the CO high country storms in August, but maybe I just got lucky and avoided most.

 

[HandgunHTR]

The reason is steam, Hyper-steam.
A water droplet expands to 10,000 times its size, when turned to steam.
When its done in a nanosecond, its a lot like the way dynamite does its thing.

Not quite 10000 times (actually 1700), but it is significant. Tight-grained trees with lots of sap are the ones that tend to explode.

In regards to voltage and its relation to amperage (current), it is governed by Ohms Law. For a given voltage, the current (amps), is dependent on the resistance. If there is a high resistance, the amperage will be low.

So, while the typical voltage of a standard static shock can be greater than 3500 volts, the natural resistance of the human body is high, so the amperage will be quite low (as stated in the OP).