THE TETON INCIDENT may be more dramatic than most, but outdoor lightning strikes are all too common. Lightning is one of the most lethal forms of weather, zapping and injuring 3,081 Americans in the past ten years and leaving 490 DOA. Many experts think lightning strikes are underreported and that the number of victims could actually be much higher. Floods and tornadoes may kill more people in a given season, but lightning is the ultimate meteorological sucker punch: No one can predict where it will hit.

According to Ron Holle, a Tucson-based lightning-safety expert and former research meteorologist for the National Severe Storms Laboratory, in Norman, Oklahoma, the overall number of lightning-related deaths has been declining for more than half a century, reflecting the fact that fewer people are farming or working outside. What's significantly increasing, meanwhile, is fatalities among hiking and adventure enthusiasts, thanks to the rising popularity of biking,

One minute you're the master of a fourteener; the next you're on a Gurney with a tube down your throat and a lifetime of recovery ahead of you—if you even survive.

climbing, and similar pursuits. "This is definitely an upward trend, especially in western states," says Holle, who is currently a consultant for Vaisala, a Finnish company that builds weather equipment and operates a nationwide lightning-detection network in the U.S. "Just look at Wyoming. Almost all lightning deaths there are outdoor-recreation-related." This summer, the risk was made dramatically clear when a lightning strike killed a teenage Boy Scout and an assistant scoutmaster in California's Sequoia National Park; five days later, another teenage scout was killed in Utah's Uinta Mountains. Nine scouts were injured in the two incidents.

Watching an electrical storm from afar is a natural spectacle, but there's good reason to feel fear when it comes closer. If you could stop any one of the 25 million flashes that touch down in the U.S. each year—gargantuan electrical discharges created by the buildup of excess negative charges in clouds—you'd feel heat of up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, five times hotter than the surface of the sun. A single flash can carry more than 100 million volts, the equivalent of 833,000 people sticking paper clips into electrical outlets. And lightning has been known to roam as far as 15 miles from the storm that bred it before striking from a clear blue sky. One minute you're the master of a fourteener; the next you're on a gurney with a tube down your throat and a lifetime of recovery ahead of you—if you even survive the current ripping through your nervous system, which can instantly shut down your heart.

Liberal was lucky that his coma spared him the intense pain from lightning-inflicted nerve damage and severe burns. After six weeks in the hospital, with repeated dialysis treatments and 21 days on a respirator, his kidneys, lungs, and pancreas began to function normally, and his swollen right leg shrank back to natural size. He was moved from intensive care, having lost 30 pounds from his five-foot-eight, 150-pound frame, and began four months of extensive physical therapy to relearn how to sit up and walk. After three weeks, he regained the use of his left arm and could walk with a cane.

Now, two years after the incident, most people can't tell that Liberal was injured unless he goes shirtless, which reveals pink scar tissue on his arm and left side, or they notice the tracheotomy scar on his throat. He's regained most of his normal movement. But the former amateur hockey player can no longer skate competitively, because his proprioception—the ability to know where one's body is in space—is off; and his right foot is constantly numb. "I still shudder when I hear kids outside playing in the rain," he says.