lightning strike

“Here's a subject I don't remember ever reading about on TT. Has anybody ever had a close call with lightning or trees and or tree limbs falling close.

Our neighbor had nine cows killed this afternoon by a lightning strike, they were huddled up under a big oak tree in one of his fields. I went over and took some pictures, man that ain't no way to go, talk about looking bad, that was one big bunch of beef laying on the ground.

About ten years ago a storm was going north of our house, it must have been five or six miles away when out of no where a bolt hit a big pecan tree in our yard, I was outside about thirty to forty feet from the tree, it knocked me down and rattled me a little but didn't hurt me seriously.”

“I was BPing in Badland NP and an Electrical storm was going on outside the tent. I was looking at all my metal stuff in there like my Tripod, Stove, cook pot, camera, ect. I was pretty much expecting to be fried at any time. The wind picked up and blew my free standing tent two complete flips across the top of a butte. What a wild ride! Cactus needles came through the wall and punctured my thermorest. Got me in the foot some to. I'm surprised that was all I got. The storm collasped my tent and I stood out in the rain trying to figure what to do next. My buddy Danny was in his tent (staked down) looking at me through his screen door. As lightning flashed across the sky, I crammed everything in my pack and then opened his door and invited myself in. Two men in a two man tent is very cramped. We lived through the storm but I'll be sure to always stake my tent down when camped in the open like that.”

“My wife's trail name is Treebait. First time we ever went camping a wind storm kicked up and dropped a giant shag bark Hickory right towards our campsite. Missed us by about fifteen feet. Pretty good firewood though.

During the '93 "Storm of the century" the storm knocked over a 40' Water Oak in her front yard where she was standing looking at it and just commented "That tree looks like it's in bad shape."

This May she was hiking the AT in the Smokies headed toward Peck's Corner and got clobbered by a dead branch (species unknown) that knocked her clear off the trail. (20 feet down and out) Luckily there were a few plants to break her fall. She ended that trip early by limping down and out.

Needless to say she gets nervous whenever a storm kicks up when we are camping and eyes all of the trees for weakness when choosing a campsite.”

“Once my house got hit by lightening. It even hit the room I was sleeping in. Sounded like a cannon went off right next to the bed. I woke up in mid air about 2 feet off the bed. Seriously! The room was lit up like a football stadium. It killed my TV, VCR, alarm clock, & a cheap stereo. Only the things plugged up in that room.”

“Hey, there has to be a better way to get a trail name, hpmule!”

“One time an acquaintance my mine was driving home in a heavy rain and lighting storm. Suddenly there was a very bright flash that lit up the whold street, and his car did a 360. Luckily it was night-time and he was the only one on the road. He thought he'd hydroplaned. He got out of the car to check it. He had a flat tire. Since he was about 1 block from his home, he slowly drove his car to his driveway. Next morning he saw a big charred dent on his wheel. The mechanic said that his wheel got hit by lighting. Strange, my friend don't remember hearing the "boom". Maybe he was too distracted trying to get his car under control.”

“I live at the end of the line up on a hill. My house is 200 years old, surrounded by tall maples, and is still standing, but direct hits on the incoming line are a bit scary. I've had many instantaneous flash/bangs; sparks jumping across the rooms from outlet to outlet; ball lightning in the bedrooms. One hit came through an old rotary phone and blew the veneer off the cabinet it was on - phone was fine! Even with surge protectors on surge protectors, we've lost three answering machine phones and two faxes over the years.

I've called the power company about beefing up the ground stake, or running the line one pole past the house to give the surges another outlet, and their advice is to go down in the cellar and piss on the ground stake when a storm is coming!

M.O. these days is to unplug everything whenever a storm looks like it might be coming, so we spend half the summer incommunicado.”

“walkindude, i saw that tent rolling thing once. MY wife and i were camping in a state park when a big storm rolled in, this was probably in the seventies, we were in an old army field tent looking out the door and watched a small tent with two guys roll all the way across the camp ground and against a tree where it hung up. The storm passed in just a few minutes and we went over and helped them out of the tent, that's what they said, what a ride.

This is gonna be a cool thread, these are some good stories, can't wait to get home and read some more of them. If the Red Code Worm doesn't get us all.”

“HAHAHA! Yeah, it's pretty wild. The cactus was my only real concern.”

“Red Code is scheduled for another kick off at 8 AM this morning. You can only get it if you're running IIS v4.0 or v5.0. However, it will probably slow down the internet today with denial of service attacks.”

“Steiny, my advice to you is to hire a professional lightning protection installer to put lightning protection on your house. Trust me, it will be worth the expense. Also installing a counterpoise around your house with multiple paths from your electrical ground to it. The whole point is to reduce the impedence of your ground path. Outside of that, the only other suggestion I have is to unplug every appliance whenever a storm rolls through.

I got knocked to my knees once by a strike that occurred just outside my house. It just so happens that I was brushing my teeth, standing on a bare concrete and tile floor in my bare feet, with my hand on the faucet. Fortunately it wasn't a direct hit, I only felt the current bleeding off through the ground.”

“whoops.....for the Code Red worm, make it 8 P.M. on Tuesday 7/31.”

“damn, ski.

you gave me a heart attack.”

“For the barely able to be here Ski, what is IIS.”

“Last time I was at Dolly Sods, I had a HUGE tree limb fall on my tarp. I was sitting with my back against a tree about 5 feet from my tarp when I heard a thunderous crack of something snapping above me. I jumped up and away from the tree just in time. It was close...reeeeeaaaallllll close!”

“microsoft internet information services.

unless you have windows 2000 or windows NT, AND IIS, don't worry about it.”

“Thanks rad.”

“Yup, don't worry about Code Red unless you are running Windows 2000 (Professional, Server, Advanced Server) or Windows NT v4.0 and Internet Information Services v4.0 or v5.0.”

“Ball Lightning.. never seen it.. but have heard about it.. rolling around like a plasma laser gone on exctasy..

I bet that would be soo strange.”

“No lightning strikes, but I've been in the middle of two tornadoes -- one hit my H.S. during sophomore English class (all the gravel in the interior courtyard outside the windows started flying in a circle and we hit the floor, then they herded us into the gym until they noticed that the roof had been detached and set back down); the other hit while awaiting a tow truck when my friend's car dropped its tranny right in the middle of US 131 at the Ferris St. U. campus. It looked like a black tidle wave washing over the dorms, bending a 100-ft. oak over to the ground. As it hovered over the center of campus, (with green lightning flashing in the core of the twister) I saw some poor guy get picked up and plastered on a brick wall. Ouch.

The only tree incidents have been beavers dropping one in the middle of the night next to our shelter on I.R., and a big one going down on its own in the forest while I was solo hiking in the Porkies -- both very loud in otherwise absolutely quiet conditions, unexpected and scared the crap out of me.”

“I've been in two tornado's, I'm not sure what ball lightning is either. When the lightning hit the pecan tree in my yard I looked up as I was on my way to the ground and saw a big ball of fire coming from the fork of the tree, it was about as big as a round laundry basket. Maybe that is what steiny meant.”

“well the lighning that just got my computer got our new stereo and TV too. Im not a happy camper right now!”

“Thank goodness for homeowner's insurance, right, MOM?”

“I was on an ambush waiting for the enemy (training), and there was a thunderstorm in the distance and I was reflecting on how it sounded just like artillery and was cool background battle noises for what we were about to do when a bolt hit about 60'-80' away. I had just been on the radio seconds before and had seen people get shocked from strikes further away, I'm glad I had put down the handmike.

Tornadoes - two that I can remember. One was also during field training. I was working in a Brigade HQ, so we had nice big tents to stay in. At about 11 PM the tent started going wild, all 8 of us jumped up and tried to hold the poles up it was blowing so bad. Then the tent went straight up into the air about 6' leaving 8 men in their underwear standing there in a driving rain storm. Then came back down on top of us. We scrambled to get it up - 8 half nakked men in a driving rain storm. The next day the guys that were on guard said it was a tornado that had gone over, and they had watched us in disbelief.”

“Nothing that close but on one trip in the Green Mountains in Vermont, we got to the shelter just as it was starting to rain. We were at about 3,000' - a good 800' below the summit. It quickly became a very violent thunderstorm. We spread out as much as we could in the small shelter and squatted on our pads in the hope that if we were hit; at least one of us would be available to help. We saw several strikes below us!

This summer someone was killed in NJ by a lighting strike at the beach from a storm several miles offshore. They said it was only hazy at the beach and no one had any idea a storm was nearby. Apparently you can be hit by lightning from a storm as far as 10 miles away!”

“Florida has the hightest number of lightening strikes a year than any other state. 10 miles is unusual but I think the record for how far from a storm lightening has struck is 17 miles but typically you are at risk at 7 miles.”

“Back in '95 an series of micro-bursts went through the Adirondacks leveling everything in their path. Hundreds of acres of white pine and spruce just flattened. I came upon a lean-to a week after the storm that was completely covered with trees from 12 to 24 inches in diameter. Inside the lean-to there was still a bunch of hiking gear. I can't imagine how scary it must have been in that lean-to with 150mph winds and lighting and trees crashing down all over the place. When I checked the ranger's log, no one had even been injured in the lean-to.”

“Some boys using the phones at the Boy Scout Jamboree were zapped. No one died, fortunately.”

“I was in that area of the Adirondacks (Five Ponds Wilderness) a couple of years ago and the devastation is still amazing.

We saw a tent platform by Little Rock Pond in Vermont with a HUGE tree toppled over on it. If anyone had been sleeping there, it wouldn't have been pretty.”

“flyguy6x -

I saw that. I had to read it carefully to make sure the Jersey boy that got zapped wasn't Ice Tea.”

“Steiny
It sounds like you built your house on that big rock that everyone keeps talking about. Very good for most things but very very bad for lighting . Ball Lighting is generaly coused by a very poor ground. Not all earth is a good ground and if it is dry and rocky then the energy from the strike has no where to go and the air becomes ionized. This ionization is what you see and is called ball lighting. The power company dose not wont to deal with you because to fix the problem they would have to run a large ground circuit to your location it is easier and much cheaper to tell you that there is nothing they can do. You could install an arrestor your self but with out sufficient ground it is useless.

I use to work for a company that makes lighting arrestor equipment and you would not believe some of the stories we would here. I have also done some testing in Impulse labs in Canada it is very cool to see lighting in a building.”

“A 12 year old boy is the envy of his friends after being hit by lightning.


He wished he'd been hurt worse:

"It was pretty cool, but I thought it would've left a bigger scar — not like a little dot," he said. "I thought it'd be a way serious injury."


His sister was jealous that she wasn't struck:

Relieved that he wasn't hurt, she jokingly complained that he was getting all the attention, even though it was her special day.

"I can be a celebrity too," she said. "It's my birthday."”

“They should have been at 10,000 feet sitting in metal chairs under a tree.”

“Holding a 9 iron in the air while watering the ground.”

“Reminds me of the story of 'SuperMex' Lee Trevino, running around like a madman during an electrical storm during a tournament, waving a club in the air. When he was asked about it later he replied 'Not even God can hit a 2-iron!'”

“We had a direct lightning strike the night before last, it hit mostly my bro in law next door, but toasted a potato plant in it's steel cage and caused sparks to shoot out of all the outlets and switches. It smoked our network card. This was the about the fifth card we've lost, so HPM went out and bought a whole box of them this morning.
It was weird, we didn't hear any thunder from it, just dead silence. Our neighbor across the street was nearly knocked off her feet by the boom the lightning produced. Very strange.”

“That sounds very similar to the time we were abducted by aliens. Are you sure your neighbor is really your neighbor, or could he/she be a Little Gray imposter?

Glad everyone is okay.”

“Yikes, glad everyone is ok.”

“I'm confused. You said you didn't hear any thunder yet you then said your neighbor was almost knocked off her feet by the boom the lightening produced (which is thunder). What do you mean exactly?

ps - I happy to hear everyone is okay. That's some scary stuff. My mom and I were in our covered driveway when I was a little girl when lightning sruck a tree next to the house. It was loud!
last edited: 4/02/05 11:34:12 AM”

“woahh...am a little confused too, but glad you are all okay.”

“Why the beajeepers are you cultivating a plant which must be kept in a steel cage?
"feed me Seymour"”

“Exactly, My brother next door and the two of us heard nothing. Everyone else did.

Very strange. I don't get it either. We walked into the house and saw the flash and the electrical outlets glowed blue and sparked but no sound other than a buzz/humm.

This variety of potato you grow in a chicken wire "cage" (more like a tube) as the plant grows and gets taller the potatoes bud off the main plant. You fill the cage with leaves and mulch to help support the plant. Otherwise the weight of the potatoes will crush the plant.

But then again it could just be Audry II.”

“okay...I agree with Gammy then. UFO, alien abduction sort of crap.

Gammy...hahahahaha...i checked out your blog. funny as #&%!$.”

“http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning6.htm

Thunder is the shockwave radiating away from the strike path. When the air heats up, it expands rapidly, creating a compression wave that propagates through the surrounding air. This compression wave manifests itself in the form of a sound wave. That does not mean that thunder is harmless. On the contrary, if you are close enough, you can feel the shockwave as it shakes the surroundings.

I would imagine that, since you were so close to it, the air rushing past hadn't had enough time to push enough other air mass in front of it to make sound. By the time the air gathered enough mass in front of the compression wave, it was already past you and travelling away.

That's damn close.”

“In fact, it sounds like you were inside 10 yards from it, is that right?

How is thunder generated?

The return stroke rapidly deposits a large amount of energy along the leader channel.? That channel is heated by the energy input to above 50,000 Degrees K.? Heating of a short section say 10 yards of channel takes only millionths of a second and hence the channel section has no time to expand while it is being heated.? Air heated from room temperature or from a leader temperature of a few thousand degrees to above 50,000 degrees K without having tie to expand attains a pressure considerable in excess of normal atmospheric pressure ? 1 atmosphere.? The initial pressure of the return stroke channel is definitely in excess of 10 atmospheres and may be 100 atmospheres or more.? The high-pressure channel rapidly expands into the surrounding air (initially at atmospheric pressure) and compresses it.? This disturbance of the air propagates outward in all directions.? For the first 10 yards or so it propagates as a shock wave ? a major disturbance in the air which travels faster than the speed of sound) and after that as an ordinary sound wave (small compressions and expansions of the air density).? The sound pulse from a short section of lightning channel lasts less than 0.1 seconds and travels at about 1090 ft/s at sea level.? The thunder we hear, then, is the pressure variations induced in the air by the expansion of each part of the lightning channel (main channel and branches) due to it?s initial high pressure
”

“Sure it wasn't an exploding potato?”

“Thanks Gemini! I like your layout. . . mucho gusto!

Hmm I need a outdoorsy link..and I'm too lazy to blog my logs.

My gawd..Kelvin was brought into this convo...I can't keep up anymore.”

“Hope everything was grounded. Glad everybody's ok.”

“Wow, what a close call. I'm glad everyone is okay.”

“Lightning struck the apartment building we lived in about 8 years ago. About 1/2 a second before it hit I heard that loud buzzing sound you described, coming from the open sliding door (not sure if it was the screen or the downspouts above the balcony). Makes sense, since lightning starts as streamers reaching up from the ground and down from the cloud. The buzzing is probably the electrical activity as the ground streamer starts to build.

Glad you were Ok.”