With speed limits now passed, it is important to emphasize that you should use all the throttle you have to avoid being caught in a lightning storm. This is not a political statement but a legitimate weather safety tip - DON'T get caught in one of Lake Winnipesaukee's notorious thunderstorms.
The storm of June 22 produced rainfall at a rate of nearly 8 inches per hour for one minute, during a 10-minute period of sustained 4"-per-hour rainfall. In such a rain event your visibility would be zero.
I have seen many thunderstorms on Winnipesaukee produce winds of hurricane force (75 mph.) In The Broads, it can get waves up to 6 feet in a very short time - I experienced it once and never again if I can help it. It was terrifying to be in The Broads and unable to see over the next wave. Even a couple miles from shore, you'd have waves of 2-3 feet. It could run you into rocks you can't even see, and then you'd be totally at the mercy of the weather.
Last week's storm included baseball size hail at Alexandria, and reported golfball hail at Meredith. Hail has been known to break car windows and I'm sure boat windows too. Getting hit in the head with golfball-size hail inflicts about the same amount of trauma as getting hit in the head with an actual golfball, except it happens repeatedly. Getting hit with baseball size hail would be pretty similar to standing on home plate without a batting helmet while Jonathan Papelbon leads the Red Sox pitching staff in some fastball practice.
First advice to boaters is know your weather and check it any time you're going more than a short distance from your dock. Storms don't always come from the same direction. Winnipesaukee's thunderstorms most often come from the NW and move to the SE, but the most severe ones usually move from SW to NE as last week's storm did. Last year I even saw one form over The Broads out of clear air (literally, I saw the thunderhead grow) and then move from SE to NW. Sometimes individual cells are moving SW to NE within a line that's moving NW to SE. In most thunderstorm days, the radar loop can give you a good idea of which way the storms will be going that day.
Second advice: They do make lightning detectors. One of the cheapest weather equipment sites I have found is
www.ambientweather.com, and they carry personal lightning detectors. You can also get a cheap subscription to
www.weathertap.com, which has a lightning detector map. It's better than radar, because radar only shows rain intensity. The lightning detector maps actually show if those rain cells are producing lightning, and whether it's increasing or dying. You can have a light rain shower that's producing a lot of lightning, or a heavy rain shower that's producing none. You wouldn't know by looking at radar alone.
Personal lightning detectors are popular with golfers and boaters, and can estimate the distance of lightning the same way as a radar detector approximates how far away the State Trooper is.
A cheap lightning detector is AM radio. Set the radio on the lowest band to get it away from all the broadcasts and into a totally blank frequency. Lightning will come across as jolts of static that sound like rips in the otherwise steady AM buzz. The louder they are, the closer they are. I have found that it detects lightning 50 miles away. That gives you an hour if the storm is coming your way at 50 mph like June 22's storm was. If you use this, get to know it *beforehand*. Don't use it for the first time in a life-or-death situation.
It is also a good idea to take a Wilderness first aid class from SOLO (
www.soloschools.com) while you are in New Hampshire for the summer. Very useful stuff for anyone who plans to be outdoors.
And once again, if you are caught off-guard by a storm even after all the preparations mentioned above, forget the speed limit and the no wake zone and USE THE THROTTLE, but only if you know where you're going and aren't endangering anyone outside your boat in the process.