lightning rod

Chuck Jackson · Post by **Chuck Jackson** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:08 pm

And all this time, I thought it was just your stunning personality.

Summer 1971- My family owns a summer home in the Adirondacks. Place has a tin roof (closest FD is an hour away). Turn on the light in the kitchen during a storm, lightning hits the stove and bounces around the kitchen. Hair stands on end, pants needed to be changed.

Summer 1977- Lightning hits garage door post while in garage with family dog. Door open. Tingling in legs, dog doesn't come out from under car for 2 hours. Should have paid attention, dog was whining pretty good 10 seconds before it hit.

Spring 1983- Greeley, CO. Lightning hits tree in front of the house I was living in. It proceeds to jump from tree to light post to tree. Bad smell of ozone.

Fall 1984- Colorado Springs. Freak October snowstorm that had really bad lightning with it. Hits sattelite dish at radio station next door and arcs to the transformer on back of station. No power at station for a week (KCME-FM).

Nothing bad since, although I can remember a night in the Spring of 1994 when there was so much lightning for so long in Norfolk, VA that you could read a book by the light.

Chuck"very wary of thunderstorms"Jackson

djwesp · Post by **djwesp** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:54 am

This isn't quite lightning.

Following the Annual "Governor's Cup" Between the University of Central Arkansas and Arkansas Tech some years ago... I was leaving the Stadium with my sousphone on, and a powerline underneath the visitors stands grazed the top of my sousaphone.

Knocked the living crap out of me and gave me a nose bleed. Had headaches and couldn't think straight for weeks. Didn't help that UCA always killed us either. I think they got rid of it when they remodeled---THANK GOD.

dwaskew · Post by **dwaskew** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:35 pm

Not that it ever touched me, but twice we've had lightning strike trees in the backyard (well, two different backyards, but they were our backyards at the time) and the lightning literally spiraled down--taking bark off the trees leaving them looking like really big candy canes, alternating bark with no bark. Odd the first time, really weird the second.

dwa

tubatooter1940 · Post by **tubatooter1940** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:01 pm

bloke, Keep you head down and your feet dry. Sounds like someone above is taking pot shots at you.

Tom Waid · Post by **Tom Waid** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:32 pm

I took this photo from the deck of my sailboat anchored in Grand Anse D'Arlet, Martinique

Speaking of sailboats, I've been aboard sailboats in open ocean during lightning storms a number of times. It's logical to think that getting struck would be a certainty but it has never happened to me. It does happen, however, and I've seen boats after they have been struck. I can only guess that the common practice of grounding the mast to the keel reduces the risk.

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:13 am

My wife, as a teenager, was in her folks back yard doing some homework on the picnic table when a quick storm boiled up. She looked up and thought she saw a flash and heard something. It turns out lightning did strike a tree in her back yard, and probably traveled along the ground and got her. The fact she "thought" she saw and heard means it probably got her, for we all know how bright and loud a ground strike can be.

She has ongoing nerve sensitivity, temperature sensitivity and circulation issues and takes about as much Gabapentin as can be prescribed to keep everything in check, and even that doesn't do it all the time.

Please, lightning is serious. Don't mess with it. When young and foolish (yeah, I know, now I'm just not so young...) the guys, including me, used it as an excuse to drink beer on the back porch and see how big a storm would get, and if we could see a tornado.

The professional storm chasers are out there to try to learn how storms work to make life better for the rest of us. Please let them do it, and do what the warnings say: take cover indoors.

My wife is lucky she wasn't outrightly killed.

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:50 am

I know that it doesn't count, but once I had a mountain leave the ground underneath it, jump over, and smack me REAL hard!

tofu · Post by **tofu** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:22 am

chipster55 · Post by **chipster55** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:56 am

Every time I've been near lightning, I was on a golf course. Maybe it was a warning (that I didn't heed) to quit the game. The last time was in 1991 in Frankfort, KY. A bad storm was coming in from the west, near Louisville. As it started raining, I hitched a ride on a cart to the pro shop. By the time we got there, we were drenched & lightning struck a tree on the 1st fairway. When I watched the Louisville news that evening, I learned that 2 golfers had been struck & killed on a golf course in Louisville.

LoyalTubist · Post by **LoyalTubist** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:05 am

Lightning never hits the same place twice? I remember a certain hospital in Norman, Oklahoma, that was hit at least ten times in thirty years. Actually, the hospital was hit a lot more than that. The chimney on the hospital was hit 20 times. But maybe you are right. The lightning destroyed the chimney, so a new one was built from scratch. It wasn't the same chimney. So it wasn't the same place.

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:55 am

the elephant wrote:Lightning never strikes the same place twice. Stop moving around so much. Problem solved.

Seems to me that I read the top of the Empire State Building gets hit hundreds of times a year.

First time I went west I got off my plane, caught a cab, and went to work. Felt just like Philly. When I got to work, they asked me how I liked the earthquake. I couldn't figure out what they were talking about. Then I realized that I was used to getting off an airport on the second floor, with rent-a-car and hotel buses rumbling past. They explained that in LA it was the ground floor...