Re: Close lightning strike

[Guest guest]

Very, very cool .

Administrator

Today a thunderstorm brewed up very quickly. I was hoping to get some good audio

because it seemed like the storm was going to pass to the south, roughly the

direction I am facing in the video. However, the forecast was wrong again and it

came rather close.

[Guest guest]

It says here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/lightning.shtml

" One lightning bolt can reach 30,000°C, five times hotter than the sun. Air can

often smell 'burnt' after a lightning strike, as the huge amount of energy

released can alter molecules in the air. "

Be thankful you weren't fried to a crisp.

Administrator

Thanks. Actually it was rather hot. The heat pulse was so strong that the skin

on my right arm flushed red for a while and I could fell the heat all over. I

went out yesterday but never found where that lightning struck. The again, the

line on a tree that gets hit can be as narrow as a pencil and the tree most

likely to have been hit given the angles in the video, is covered with ivy, to

it would be hard to see it.

[Guest guest]

It was rather warm. Still, I haven't been able to pick out where the lightning actually hit. This house has been hit maybe twice in the time I've lived here, once while I was actually in it and another while I was out of town. Maybe the house itself was hit again, but I don't think so given the delay between the flash and thunder. I still think it was that tree at the street, but it doesn't show any signs of damage.

In a message dated 5/25/2010 12:41:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

It says here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/lightning.shtml"One lightning bolt can reach 30,000°C, five times hotter than the sun. Air can often smell 'burnt' after a lightning strike, as the huge amount of energy released can alter molecules in the air."Be thankful you weren't fried to a crisp. Administrator

[Guest guest]

" Maybe the house itself was hit again, but I don't think so given the delay

between the flash and thunder. I still think it was that tree at the street, but

it doesn't show any signs of damage. "

If you have a lightning rod, you wouldn't notice whether or not the house was

hit. (Sometimes lightning avoids the lightning rod.)

Lightning can do strange things. Sometimes it can hit a tree and go through a

knothole and travel down its center.

We had a neighbor who had the biggest maple tree in the area. Lightning went

through the tree without hitting it, and hit their garage, blasting a hole in

the roof and melting the electrical line from the garage to the house.

Administrator

[Guest guest]

, I am glad you are OK.

my mum told me that when she was a youngster, she was walking down the main stairs of her family home, towards the front door which faced the street, during a thunder storm; 'lightning struck the transformer on the power pole at the street, the transformer exploded'

My mum said this was why she was really afraid of lightening throuout her life. I did not assimilate her fear of lightening, But am somewhat phobic of the High Voltage Electrical Wires that are carrier high above the grouund on the towers/pylons. If I need to walk under them, I will generally trot (am not able to run) to get it over with sooner. (don't think my phobia is directly related to my mum's story, as her close encounter was in a residential area with a normal transformer on a village street)

rl

'My cat Rusty is a servant of the Living God....'

adapted from a poem by Smart

From: environmental1st2003 <no_reply >To: FAMSecretSociety Sent: Wed, May 26, 2010 8:41:55 AMSubject: Re: Close lightning strike

"Maybe the house itself was hit again, but I don't think so given the delay between the flash and thunder. I still think it was that tree at the street, but it doesn't show any signs of damage."If you have a lightning rod, you wouldn't notice whether or not the house was hit. (Sometimes lightning avoids the lightning rod.)Lightning can do strange things. Sometimes it can hit a tree and go through a knothole and travel down its center.We had a neighbor who had the biggest maple tree in the area. Lightning went through the tree without hitting it, and hit their garage, blasting a hole in the roof and melting the electrical line from the garage to the house.Administrator

[Guest guest]

This house doesn't have a lightning rod. One of my grandparent's houses did, although it was rather undone by having a huge hardwood tree growing very close to the area the rod was attached.

When I was in high school I went for a weekend to stay with a friend. A big thunderstorm came up one evening while we were in his room. A bolt of lighting came into the house through an open window at the end of the hall, past the room we were in (the door was open and we saw it plainly), then down the stairs. Strange thing was that it never made a sound. We ran downstairs to see if everyone was OK and they didn't even realize what had happened. None of them had noticed it.

In a message dated 5/26/2010 11:42:29 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

If you have a lightning rod, you wouldn't notice whether or not the house was hit. (Sometimes lightning avoids the lightning rod.)Lightning can do strange things. Sometimes it can hit a tree and go through a knothole and travel down its center.We had a neighbor who had the biggest maple tree in the area. Lightning went through the tree without hitting it, and hit their garage, blasting a hole in the roof and melting the electrical line from the garage to the house.Administrator

[Guest guest]

Thanks RL. There have been plenty of transformer explosions around here, though mostly from trees falling on the lines and taking them out.

When I was a little kid, I was in my playroom which had been a screen porch but had been enclosed to make another room. Lots of windows out there. Lightning struck a pine tree in the neighbor's yard on that side. It was really bright and loud. Tree bark then pelted the window. It had been blown off the tree by the strike. The next day we went out there and met the neighbor. Pine bark was all over the yard and the tree had a wide scar down its whole length. The tree later had to be cut down due to the damage.

, I am glad you are OK.

my mum told me that when she was a youngster, she was walking down the main stairs of her family home, towards the front door which faced the street, during a thunder storm; 'lightning struck the transformer on the power pole at the street, the transformer exploded'

My mum said this was why she was really afraid of lightening throuout her life. I did not assimilate her fear of lightening, But am somewhat phobic of the High Voltage Electrical Wires that are carrier high above the grouund on the towers/pylons. If I need to walk under them, I will generally trot (am not able to run) to get it over with sooner. (don't think my phobia is directly related to my mum's story, as her close encounter was in a residential area with a normal transformer on a village street)

rl

[Guest guest]

This house doesn't have a lightning rod. One of my grandparent's houses did, although it was rather undone by having a huge hardwood tree growing very close to the area the rod was attached.

If you cannot find one to purchase, you can make your own. You can probably find out online how to make one. Simply put, you need a metal rod that will reacher higher than the highest point of your house and a wire that goes from the rod to the ground. We have one, and although we have no way to prove this, we believe the lightning rod was struck at least once in the 42 years we've had the house.

"When I was in high school I went for a weekend to stay with a friend. A big thunderstorm came up one evening while we were in his room. A bolt of lighting came into the house through an open window at the end of the hall, past the room we were in (the door was open and we saw it plainly), then down the stairs. Strange thing was that it never made a sound. We ran downstairs to see if everyone was OK and they didn't even realize what had happened. None of them had noticed it."

The sound associated with lightning is the result of particles in the air being separated to make room for the electrical charge, and the air coming back to fill in the gap. Also, the superheated air itself can cause a sound. Depending how quickly and to what degree this happens, you can get anything from no noise at all to the sonic boom we are all familiar with.

Also, how close you are to the strike plays a role in whether or not you hear it. If sound travels at the speed of sound, and the sound of some lightning bolts travel FASTER than the speed of sound, if you are standing within a couple feet of the strike, you may not hear anything because the sound will have come and gone before your ears were even able to detect the noise.

Lightning is pretty interesting and can do some interesting things. I have seen its aftermath in a number of occassions and know of many instances where it caused and did not cause damages. In addition to the story I told about lighning hitting my neighbor's garage, I know that another neighbor was talking on the phone once and lightning hit the house, melting the receiver in her hand and giving her blisters.

I saw lightning hit a cottonwood tree once and knock a small limb off of it but do no more damage than that. I also saw a tree which was hit by lighning in which the entire stump was blown to pieces, as though a bunch of dynamite had gone off inside it.

A relative of mine claimed to have seen a lightning ball enter their house through a window and disappear through a crack in the floor. It did no damage to the house and made no sound.

Administrator