Lightning Strike!

How do you really prepare for a lightning strike? We had a strike close to the house, didn't hit it but was close enough to spike the electrical system. I have quality surge protectors on just about everything and they seem to work, but my Wifi router is not protected and the spike wiped out the programming inside. Took two days to get a tech out here to fix it. Amazing just how much we depend on the Internet to make life easier and never realize it until we loose it! We have a poor system in our area which goes out about 3 times a year, reason I never tried any of my other routers. Around here, one wouldn't think anything wrong if you saw a Pony Express rider delivering the mail or a few crank telephones still in use! :highly_amused:

I've always thought it interesting that Dr. Franklin invented a device which attracts lightning to the house.


(We lose internet about twice a week here. Cars hitting poles, power outages, signal snarl ups, etc. Might be wise to have a reliable surge protector on every digital device in the house - or at least on the main connection to the house.)

The late 18th century fashion of wearing lightning protection on a daily promenade:

If it strikes close enough I am not sure if any surge protector will contain it.

Some years ago we had a strike Very close to the house. Huge flash and bang in the same instant and the ozone smell in the air. It blew some outlets out of their boxes, took out 2 TVs and a microwave. The phone in the kitchen became a cordless phone. The cord disappeared leaving a burnt smudge on the wall plate. Our well water had an aerated look for days. Our neighbor lost his well pump, TVs and about everything else that was connected in the house.
We were lucky there was no more damage or fire.

David

Old fashioned lightning rods actually work quite well. Yeah, you could say they "attract" lightning, but the point is that they shunt the local charge to ground without doing any damage. Far better than having it hit anything else! A great first level of defense.

All sorts of other suppression devices for power lines, cable, phone lines and so on; which are second level defenses. Essential protection, but won't handle a direct strike.

When I was a teen, we lived several years in an old farmhouse in rural Iowa. Had a couple of trees & a windmill near the house, but otherwise was the tallest thing around. It fairly bristled with lightning rods, one on every peak and on every chimney. Thunderstorms were common, and every time, I could see where one of the rods had taken a hit. Each one had a braided copper conductor to a ground rod, and the old, dull verdigris would pop off and leave a bright green coating when the attached rod took a hit. Never had any other damage, even to Dad's amateur radio gear.

By way of contrast, we later moved to a house in a small town in Indiana, that didn't have rods. First big thunderstorm, I saw a ball of lightning jump out of an electrical outlet on one side of the room, run across the room, and jump into another one. Afterwards, you could see the trail it left on the floor, and both outlets were ruined. We had unplugged all the electronics (TV, etc, no Internet then of course), but obviously anything plugged into those outlets would have been toast.

So it's true, ball lightening as you described, does exists! As kids we frequently watched T-storms from our "big room" - an A-frame with floor to ceiling windows - probably not a good idea at the time but the show was spectacular. On one occasion a ball of lightening "bounced and splashed" into the room, narrowly missing our lazy dog, then dissipated leaving little evidence on the tile floor.

"Lightning Capitol of the World" is the claim here. Once, soon after moving into the hovel, sat with a cat on my lap as a ball came from a wall socket near the couch, ran along an aluminum strip on the floor separating carpet from kitchen lino. Cat went straight in the air, I about followed. Had never seen that before. Cat was the only other witness tho, so anecdotal tale, I guess.

A law office client called on a Monday a while back, offices in an old three-story house off of Bayshore in Tampa. The Friday before a strike hit a pole in the parking lot of the place, knocked a lawyer out of his chair. The spike crawled into the house on the communication wires, knocked out 35(!) NIC cards. Didn't go further into any of the machines, though! Weird stuff, lightning. But I had a nice check from a law office!

PAUL161 said:

How do you really prepare for a lightning strike? We had a strike close to the house, didn't hit it but was close enough to spike the electrical system. I have quality surge protectors on just about everything and they seem to work, but my Wifi router is not protected and the spike wiped out the programming inside. Took two days to get a tech out here to fix it. Amazing just how much we depend on the Internet to make life easier and never realize it until we loose it! We have a poor system in our area which goes out about 3 times a year, reason I never tried any of my other routers. Around here, one wouldn't think anything wrong if you saw a Pony Express rider delivering the mail or a few crank telephones still in use! :highly_amused:

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I unplug EVERYTHING when I leave the house - I got an "educational reminder" the hard way when I lived back i Virginia...I was in a hurry to get to work and didn't. A storm came up while I was driving back from work, I just about had the key in the door of the house when lightning hit the pole at the street, whole neighborhood went dark. 6 hours later when the power came back on, I had lost 2 computers, a television, a video selector (days before TV's had multiple inputs), a microwave and a few other small items. I found the scorch marks on the wall (right near curtains no less) behind furniture where the arc jumped across coax and phone couplers. The computers were linked together via a null-modem RS232 setup (yeah that long ago) and the surge blew the RS232 voltage driver chips right off the boards - just a black charred hole where it had been. Those were fairly expensive 4 port RS232 cards - when I got the computers replaced I tried the other ports and amazingly they worked. I still have them somewhere....

So now I religiously unplug everything (except the refrigerator and maybe an electric fan that would cost $15.00 to replace) whenever I leave the house, or if I am at home and there is any thunder or lightning in the area. And pull the phone connectors too, yanking the power cords doesn't help if a blast comes down the phone line. Don't have cable TV/internet out where I live or it would get disconnected also.

Also when I lived in Virginia, I was at the house (with most stuff unplugged) when a lightning strike hit the next door tree - had enough residual to shoot sparks out of every light switch in the house and blew some bulbs. The one thing I had forgotten to unplug was connected to one of those Trip-Lite Isobar units - I can say that worked. The TV was fine, but the Isobar unit itself was completely fried. They replaced it for free and were willing to back their guarantee of replacing whatever was connected to it if needed, but there was no need. I had that TV for another 20 years until the flyback transformer self destructed.

Trees around here get peppered all the time
From my office I can see 4 that have been hit in the last 3 years

DNK said:

Trees around here get peppered all the time
From my office I can see 4 that have been hit in the last 3 years

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Still have the remnants of a Pinion Tree in the dog run out back that was splintered pretty good by a strike a few years ago.

DrEntropy said:

"knocked a lawyer out of his chair."

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You know there are those who'd say, that wasn't even a good start...:wink-new:

Living on a lighthouse offshore of land we were struck many times during storms but iron houses do not catch fire.