Lightening strike

[Mace Canute]

Sorry to hear this. Lightning can be really scary. I've never seen a direct hit on my land, but I've been close enough to see the flash and only count to two before hearing it. I'm told the rule of thumb is that if you can count to five, you are in danger!!!

Client of mine in the city of Tyler was at work when a storm came through and her pine trees where struck. It cut a strip through the bark of tree up high, wound its way around, jumped to other trees and then hit her lawn. She came home to no electronics in her house. TV, computer, phone, appliances and just about everything else plugged into an outlet where all fried. A buddy of mine who is a Master Electrician came out and looked over the wiring. Half a dozen breakers where ruined, but he couldn't find any damaged wiring. He thinks the electricity traveled across the wet grass 50 feet to her natural gas pipe, and came into the house there. Then it found her ground wire, and entered her breaker box. The burn marks in the box are all off of the main ground wire.

Friends have said that they heard it hit almost a mile away.

I honestly had no idea that lightning would travel that far from a hit and cause so much damage.

I think your friends were a mile away and heard it hit but there's no way lightning will hit and cause damage a mile away by traveling through the ground; it would need a conductor such as a power line to do so.

I have heard of an instance where a lightning strike in a farmyard was very similar to the one you described. It initially hit a windmill tower and then danced around the yard and did hit the house also causing damage. If the strike is an extraordinary powerful one in both voltage and amperage the ground resistance is too high to bleed off all the energy and everything becomes just one big contact point.

Years ago when I was a Lineman we were in the process of energizing a short stretch, about a mile, of 25 Kv three phase line we had just built and two of us were in a double bucket truck doing the hook up using 40 Kv rated rubber gloves while standing in buckets with bucket liners that were rated for 50 Kv all on the end of a boom that was rated for (IIRC) 100 Kv. We'd use jumpers on the end of an 8 foot insulated hot stick to pick up the load when we energized the new line after which we would move in and do the actual connections by hand. There was a storm moving in in the horizon and we were just finishing up the last connection when a good sized lighting strike hit about half a mile away. To this day I don't know what caused it but both of us experienced every muscle in our bodies tense up and I mean TENSE UP! It lasted a few seconds, long enough to expel all air from our lungs and not let us take a breath. Very strange sensation and that was the extent of it.

 

[EddieWalker]

I wasn't clear. My clients house was about 50 feet away from the tree that was struck by the lightning. There was rain and the grass was wet. The electrician who came out to fix the damage said that he thinks the electricity from the strike came into the house from the metal natural gas pipeline, and then along the ground wire into the electrical panel.

After I posted this picture on Facebook, friends commented that they heard it hit and thought it was a lot closer to where they where when it happened. One was a realtor showing a house about a mile away from where it hit. He was surprised at how far away he was, and how loud it was.

 

[Mace Canute]

I wasn't clear. My clients house was about 50 feet away from the tree that was struck by the lightning. There was rain and the grass was wet. The electrician who came out to fix the damage said that he thinks the electricity from the strike came into the house from the metal natural gas pipeline, and then along the ground wire into the electrical panel.

After I posted this picture on Facebook, friends commented that they heard it hit and thought it was a lot closer to where they where when it happened. One was a realtor showing a house about a mile away from where it hit. He was surprised at how far away he was, and how loud it was.


View attachment 522528

That's certainly a possibility and if true it means the lightning strike has very likely burned a hole through the insulation on the natural gas pipe. I can't see it not doing so. Sooner or later corrosion will make a hole through the pipe and a gas leak will occur. If that happens the gas will migrate along the trench (because the top few inches of fill tends to get compacted much more than the fill around the pipe) and it's highly likely it will make it to the house and either come up around the riser or if there's a crack in the basement right there or close by, it can leak through the crack into the basement.

 

[civilian]

Last week end we were camping in a pop up camper in the UP of Michigan. At a state park campground. Nasty storm came in at night, woke me up with all the rain. I figured at least 1/2" of rain that night. Pop up camper roof's are quite nosy in hard rain. Laying awake in the canvas end bunks, I usually can not see out the canvas above my head, even in the daytime. Well along comes the lightning strike. I can see it through the canvas above, coming straight down, and hear the crack at the same time. Very freaking. Waiting for a crash, but it didn't happen. Looked the next morning for a tree with the split like in EddieWalker's post, but didn't find it. had to be awful close. Don't want to be that close again.

Another time, in a metal fishing boat on a lake and it started raining. Had a fish bite, so I grabbed the pole. Felt a slight tingle, notinh bad, but we headed in then. A storm was approaching. Jon

 

[EddieWalker]

That's certainly a possibility and if true it means the lightning strike has very likely burned a hole through the insulation on the natural gas pipe. I can't see it not doing so. Sooner or later corrosion will make a hole through the pipe and a gas leak will occur. If that happens the gas will migrate along the trench (because the top few inches of fill tends to get compacted much more than the fill around the pipe) and it's highly likely it will make it to the house and either come up around the riser or if there's a crack in the basement right there or close by, it can leak through the crack into the basement.

Here in the South, we do not insulate our gas lines. I've never heard of that before and can only guess that it's a Northern thing.

We do not have basements here. We don't have the freezing issue here, so older homes are all pier and beam foundation, new homes are all slab construction.

Gas pipes are usually black pipe that are covered in rust. How long they last is anybodies guess, but there are an awful lot of homes with rusty black pipe going into the house from the ground. A lot of older houses use this pipe to ground their electrical systems. While not ideal, and not up to current code, it is what it is and very common.

 

[Mace Canute]

Here in the South, we do not insulate our gas lines. I've never heard of that before and can only guess that it's a Northern thing.

We do not have basements here. We don't have the freezing issue here, so older homes are all pier and beam foundation, new homes are all slab construction.

Gas pipes are usually black pipe that are covered in rust. How long they last is anybodies guess, but there are an awful lot of homes with rusty black pipe going into the house from the ground. A lot of older houses use this pipe to ground their electrical systems. While not ideal, and not up to current code, it is what it is and very common.

Without exception ALL underground gas pipes here are insulated or they are a plastic line. For a long time now they've gone with plastic but at one time all natural gas lines were metal and were called Yellow Jacket because the had a yellow plastic coating overtop a sticky asphalt like coating. If they hadn't have used Yellow Jacket pipe we'd have thousands of miles of gas line that would have had to been replaced because of corrosion.