Lightning

[vakkotaur]

No big sky-sparks today, but a conversation with ginafae last night reminded me of my one somewhat close encounter with lightning.

I must first explain that I had a ground-mounted vertical antenna for amateur radio. I had gotten it "for the hauling away" as the previous owner didn't think much of it. What he, and its many previous owners, hadn't done was give it a truly good ground. Antennas like that only work well if they have a sort of electrical mirror beneath them. I gave it that mirror by burying a set of ground wires that radiated outward from the antenna. It worked just fine that way.

Getting on with the story, there was an electrical storm, and it didn't seem any different than any other. It wasn't a big deal, and it wasn't anything that generated a tornado warning of any kind. Eventually the storm passed, or so it seemed. The thunder was distant, then silent. The rain tapered off to nothing. And then...

*FLBANGASH*

It was one event, lightning and thunder all together in an instant. The walls shook. A picture fell. We waited a bit, as lightning does strike twice. Looking outside, there was smoke coming from what had been the outside phone box connection.

Inside, the damage was limited. The fax machine no longer worked (even after phone service had been restored) and one wall-transformer was burned out. Maybe one fuse had to be replaced. That was all.

Outside, the phone lines were burned and what remained of the box with the connections was melted. The box and the line from the road to the house had to be replaced. But what was impressive and scary was where the phone line and where some of ground wires used to be. Used to be. They simply were not there anymore. Instead, there was a trench, in places it was almost a ditch, where the wires had been. We had figured that the lightning had possibly vaporized the wires, or at least got them extremely hot. So hot that the water in the ground boiled and the steam explosion blew out the trenches.

It was not a direct hit. There were no signs of damage to the antenna, or to utility poles, or to trees - save for a trench doing some uprooting. This was something that was merely close. That only made the damage even more impressive.

Comments

[tkcoyote.livejournal.com]

Heh, that was a pretty close call. Still, no matter how dangerous the lightning is, it is rare here in Central CA. We all sit at the porch (or inside the house by the window) to watch it. In fact, there are a few lightning strikes just a few moments ago. Sadly (and fortunately) we do not get the severe types of lightning everyone in the central and eastern U.S. get. If those wires did vaporize, that would have been pretty impressive to catch on film ^_^
-Tk