A lightning storm powerful enough to zap chairlift riders with shocks of static electricity cleared the slopes on Mount Hood Sunday morning and canceled a day of training at the peak of the summer season.

It was a busy day for youth racers from various clubs and camps, and masters racers getting their last training in for next weekend’s Summer Fun Nationals. More than 30 teams were jockeying for space on 19 lanes.

Racers had already been pounding the gates on the Palmer Snowfield for an hour when the thunder started rumbling at around 8 am Sunday and the sky filled with sporadic blasts of lightning.

Marcus Caston, a coach with Cascade Winter Sports Club, says he was riding the Palmer chair up when the storm hit and every time he touched metal he got a shock.

Timberline shut down the lifts and skiers and snowboarders raced down a narrow strip of snow to take shelter.

The air was lively with electricity for the next several hours, and the light was equal parts stunning and foreboding.

For some visitors, it was a huge disappointment to have to sit in the lodge instead of shredding corn snow in the fresh air in July. Dozens of Canadian kids on a 40-day adventure from Calgary to Arizona by way of Mount Hood and San Francisco ended up returning their rental gear without riding the lift once.

“This was our one day to ski,” said Jon Levine of West Coast Connections. “It was cool to watch the lightning, but the kids would rather be going down the hill right now.”

Others were irritated with the Timberline policy of refunding just 50 percent of the ticket price after the lifts were shut down. But as my ski buddy Ted Morris wryly pointed out, “It’s better than getting electrocuted.”

Lightning strikes sent up smoke in several locations as the storm peaked. The ridge to the southeast turned hazy with spreading smoke for a while, but I never saw flames indicating a large-scale forest fire.

By noon pretty much everyone had headed down the hill to watch the World Cup final between Germany and Argentina. The storm dissipated and Mount Hood went back to looking pretty much normal for mid-July, with plenty of snow left for summer shredding.

Last modified: July 14, 2014