Lightning Strikes!

[RichZ]

Thanks, Garry, but I had a tree surgeon look at it. When the lightning blew out the sides, we found that the whole inside was all rotted. There's very little left to work with, so unfortunately it's gotta go. My wife and I keep delaying it, because it's like seeing an old friend die, but we're going to have the tree surgeon over soon to take it down./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

 

[Golfgar4]

That's too bad Rich. It sounds like it was a really great tree. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

When we built our last house, it was so barren in the neighborhood because all of the houses were new, that we spent about $4,000.00 to have two large locust trees brought in and planted in the front yard. These things were about 20' tall when they were planted.

Two years ago we had a wind storm (can we say tornado?) come through and split the prettier of the two (of course /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif) down the middle about 1/3 of the way down the trunk. After the storm, my wife says we better get the chain saw out. I say No Way! We're going to get a professional opinion first! So, I get a tree surgeon out to look at it, and he says it can be saved, it just needs some radical surgery! So I say, O.K. Do it to it!

I come home from work one day a week or so later, and Yikes!/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif. It doesn't even remotely look like the tree that I remember. I call the guy up and ask about it. He says we're going to have to give it a couple of years to begin to come back like it was.

Well, it has been a couple of years now, and I have to admit, the tree is starting to look "normal" again. It certainly would've cost a lot more to have it removed and then replaced. It was amazing what this professional was able to do. I guess I was hoping you'd be as lucky as I was. Sorry it didn't work out for you. /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif

 

[rancar]

Hi Gus....

Lightning is a mysterious and unpredictable thing. Not sure if I can answer your questions, but I can relate an experience.

In 1991 the cupola on my barn roof was struck by lightning. It put a hole in the cupola roof and set it on fire. Fortunately, heavy rain at the time knocked down the flames. The lightning though somehow entered the electrical system in the barn (I don't know how it did this because I have no outlets in the cupola. Nearest receptacle of any kind was 30 feet away) and traveled through the underground wiring into my main breaker box in the house....about 150 feet away. The strike blew out my breaker box...had to replace the whole thing. But beyond that, it traveled throughout the electrical system in the house. The incredible surge burned out my microwave, fridge, VCR, telephone, and a clock radio. But, it couldn't care less about the other appliances and electrical things in the house. It seemed to be very selective.

Now, during every lightning storm, we pull all appliances and major electrical things. This is something so unpredictable.

Bob

 

[dgood1]

rancar,

Sounds like you could have used some lightning rods on your barn.

My electrical co-op has installed surge protectors on my poles before the service comes down to the meter. These won't stop a direct hit but will keep out the surges. They have a window on them with a lcd type of indicator. I have to look at them from time to time to make sure that they haven't turned black from the normal silver color.

For those of you not famliar with surge protectors. They have solid state devices that short pulses to ground. They only can handle up to a certain amount of voltage and each time that they are used some of the protection is lost. Hence the indicator circuit to let you know when the protection is gone.

The cost was $ 75.00 each.

Don

 

[Ozarker]

That is almost the same thing that happened to my brother-in-law. Lightening hit his garage that was about 100 feet from the house but it went to the house through the underground wiring. It was such a strike that it caused some of the outlets in the house to try and jump out of the wall. Many of them were pushed out about 1/4". He lost every appliance that was plugged in except the refrigerator.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

my next door neighbor lost half an Ash to a lightning strike. He had a Malibu light at the base of the tree. The current went along the path of the wiring for the light to the transformer and then into the house. It took out just about everything in there electrical.

What blew my mind the most about it was it looked like he'd taken a power washer and hosed out the pathway of the wiring from the tree to the transformer.

In my youth I used to shoot cable trouble in the San Fernando Valley for the GTE. The lightning would hit up in the mountains and come down the cable. You could open the splice closure and have the connectors just blown apart. The telephone cable pairs are wrapped at different rates in a group to keep cross talk down. The groups of pairs are sorta like a rope but not as tightly wrapped. If the cable was aerial sometimes you could see where the current would come down one particular group and as it came close to the suspension strand supporting the cable it would jump through the sheath to it. So every five to eight feet you'd have a burn through.

Another thing interesting about the current is when we'd run a number six ground wire they taught us to make lazy bends when doing corners. It seems if you do a tight ninety the current might blow out the corner. Then of course the ground is no longer good and the current takes the next least resistant path of resistance, say your phone and the ear attached.

 

[TimSullivan]

About twenty years ago I was coaching my son’s Little League team when a bad thunderstorm hit. The kids were all in the dugouts and the coaches headed to the refreshment stand to talk about rescheduling the game.

Four of us were standing by the concrete building under a large overhanging roof. A bolt of lighting hit the power riser that was about ten feet from us and just around a corner of the building. The grounding system worked well and dissipated the charge but the noise and flash of that strike was something else. None of us was injured but it sure did get our attention. We quickly moved the kids and the adults into the cars in the parking lot.

The riser had been installed by a commercial electrical contractor as a gift to the town baseball program. It seems that he had materials left over from a job he had done on a large building site. The wire and system was a lot heavier than than what was called for in the NEC.

 

[dmccarty]

Tim,

Your story mentioned dugouts which brought this event to
mind...

A few years ago a group was kayaking along the coast of
Maine. A storm rolled in so they took shelter in an old WWII
bunker. Concrete with reinforcing steel. The group was in
the bunker and they felt secure encased in all that steel
and concrete. Some of them where leaning up against the
walls when a bolt hit the bunker. It killed a couple of the
people and injured a few more. They thought they were safe,
and one would certainly think so, but the bunker did not
protect them at all.....

I got caught in a T Storm Saturday. I was mowing and only
had to mow down a 1000 feet and then come back up to
finish. I could see the storm but I could not hear any thunder
over the engine and rotary cutter. The bottom opened up
on this storm while I was 1000 feet away from my truck. I
just finished mowing since there was no way to get back to
the truck before I was soaked. I finished in a few minutes,
parked the tractor, put everything that might be hurt by the
rain into the truck and just sat down on my heels to let it
finish raining. There was lightning all around me but a mile
or so away. I was as wet as if I had jumped in a lake. At
least it cleaned me up from the mowing and the sweating!
/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif And I got to see if the culvert I just put in worked!
And it did! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

But it ain't fun being out in the lightning....

Later,
Dan McCarty