Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Lightning Bolt

We had a lightning strike 6 feet from the shop Friday night. It hit the ground and blew out chunks of sod and soil.

Breakers were popped in the house, shop and office building. We have a lot of fried electronics.

I have some photos and will have a full inventory of the damage in a few days.

The good thing is that lighting could just as easily hit us sleeping in our bed and chose a spot 40 feet away!

We also got about 5 inches of rain so the river is running high and the pond she is a rising.

Man, that's a bummer. Been there and done that, with the fried electronics. I guess on the bright side; odds are, it won't happen again, supposedly. Glad yall are all right.

Sorry to hear that Dwight. Glad you're O.K. Have you heard about the flooding in Calgary after a quick 6 inches?

I believe exactly the opposite. It likes to strike the same area often.

We have a tree that is between all our buildings. It has been struck about 4 or 5 times in the last 14 years. When ever it is lightning, I won't walk near it or park the cars by it. I have bee temted to cut it down, but then it will most likely hit the next tallest thing around, which is one of the buildings. Actually, before it grew tall, lightning hit the oil well tank near by. The tank blew off the 1" plate metal top and caught on fire. I'm going to guess that the top is 10' across. It flew up into the air, came down on the one building with a metal roof, and peeled it open like a can opener. It rolled off the roof and plowed a furrow across the lawn where it eventually slammed into the shop building that is concrete block, cracking the wall and knocking out a window.

The explosion also blew out some of our house windows and a pipe that was part of the tank was found across our hay field 1000 feet away.

40' is a bit close. Glad you are OK!

Lightning causes a bunch of damage every year, just that ya don't hear about it on the news. Happens up here all the time. I know more people up here that their house or business got zapped with damage than other natural events. I'll have to give the spring floods up here some credit for causing a bunch of damage this year.

Proper grounding is a must, but by no means is it gonna totally save you.

The most common surges come from your power lines when they get hit. This is where proper grounding helps the most, but still not fail safe.

Ground strikes seem to cause the most damage, at least from what I have seen lately. You could have an extension cord outside that's plugged into an outlet or underground wiring to to some gizmo. Lightning strikes near by and the surge back feeds and takes stuff out.

Lightning surges are really fast and powerful. It will be thru that circuit breaker and destroy your equipment before a CB knows what is going on. When your equipment is destroyed, then it knows!

More later.

There have been at least (5) strikes in my neighborhood and there's only like 20 or so houses here. We do sit high up on a ridge, kind of, that catches weather from the west.

Many of us have put in lightening rod systems.

From what the dude told me, this systems basically acts to 'wick off' the static electricity that your house generates, be it positive or negative.

According to dude, it's not really that the lightening will hit the pointed metal spikes, as one would assume.

That's the idea. We have had one of our trees struck at least 3 times. Our house has nor been hit. We installed our lightning rods right after the house was built.

Yeah, you're probably right. I've heard tell, that some people have actually been struck multiple times and survived. My ex brother-in-law claims to have been struck twice and avoided serious injury. Although, he tends to exaggerate when inebriated.

Perhaps, you or Dwight could put his claims to a test and hire him as a human lighting rod, and station him on the edge of your property. I'm sure he's available, and he works cheap. About a thirty pack of cheap beer per day, plus an occasional meal, and he's good to go.

Dang Dwight. I'll bet your ears are still ringing from the noise. Glad to hear that everybody's safe. Tan and the rest of the crew still have all their fur? Have they come out from hiding yet?

Prior to our getting a lightening rod system, we had a strike, but we believe it hit the dog's invisible fence wire that was buried about 6-8" down around the perimeter of the yard.

Ya know, I use that same line of thought when I fly. I always carry a gun on board, because the chance of two people having a gun on a flight has got to be at least a billion to one.

I would if I had that option.........

Ah a topic I know a little about... Lightning rods are to bleed of potential carge build-up before a lightning strike can occur, diverting I someplace else where the charge builds up faster. It is best to sharpen the rods on occasion for best protection. One of mine is burned off from a direct hit, but that hit did very little damage inside the house, only a fried answering machine.

Next time I'm up on the roof to sharpen the rods, I'm going to video tape it and overdub the Addams Family theme song over the video.

Glad to read all is good as far as peoples well being after that very close strike.

Ever been out on a big lake, like Mille Lacs, and have your fishing line float off the water and rise into the air after casting out? That sends shivers down a mans back, 2 miles out and you are the high point. Aluminum boat and 6-7' graphite rods in hand.

Holy cow, really? That you are here to write about it is a testament to your luck! To do that the electrical field must have been quite high, with a strike very imminent. Good sign to make haste to land.
Watching a storm roll off of Lake Ontario once, my mom and I witnessed a small boat staying out in front only a short distance going top speed to get away. The storm was particularly electrical and quite a show, but everyone on shore was cheering on the poor guy in the little boat. Amazingly he never got hit, but we all fled just before the storm reached us, and never knew if the boat made it before being enveloped. Im sure that is one person who needed a stiff drink at home.

Here are a couple photos of the lightning strike location. Not very dramatic. It looks like the total on replacing electronic gear for both home and business will be in the neighborhood of $25K

Sorry I am late to this. Glad all are ok. At least you are up and going (net-wise). How did the cats react?

Tan and Zeke seemed up affected. Zoey spent the following 18 hours hiding in the basement and then was pretty nervous for a couple more days.

WOW!

I always feel better after getting zapped! Some people act like Zoey.

Seriously tho, you are really lucky that the lightning strike found a path thru your electrical system. At 40 feet from a ground strike, you are well within the ground cover range that a strike can produce. Everything can go Hot! Being outside, this close, the step current can easily kill you in about the time frame of half the speed of light. Being inside, it has to chew thru some stuff first, but it knows how to eat.

If you do go with an Lightning Protection System (LPS), make sure all the components bear the UL logo. There will also be a UL file number with these and you can look it up online to get all the details.

There is also quite a bit to installing this type of system properly, so the "person" installing this should be UL Certified! You can also get the installation UL Inspected and Certified.

Too much Snake Oil in this area with Lightning Rods, and many have paid the price with their lives from being duped with a grossly false sense of security.

Trust me, there is no way you can shoo away a Lightning Strike. It will do what it wants!



UL stands for Underwriters Laboratory.

We have armadillos that can do more lawn damage than that. Glad you weren't close when it happened.

Shocking story!

Last Summer, lighting struck this Post Oak tree on my property. The tree was about 40' tall with about an 18" diameter trunk. The bottom two thirds of the trunk literally exploded, scattering chunks of bark up to 150' away, and shards of wood the size of baseball bats were found up to 100' away. The top of the tree flipped over, landing the canopy onto the remnants of the trunk.
I've seen other trees which have been struck by lightning before, but never total devastation like this. If anyone had been standing nearby they could have been seriously injured by the shrapnel, or if the tree had been near a house, windows could have been broken............ Jeez, no wonder Mamma wouldn't let us play outside during thunderstorms.
After my usual 9 months of procrastination I finally got around to cleaning up the mess.
This tree used to look just like the 3 trees behind it, and was of similar size; however, the explosion of the trunk penetrated the ground and spread the remaining trunk pieces, giving it the appearance of having been a much larger tree.................. I decided to leave the remnants standing as a testament to the power of Mother Nature. Besides, it looks kinda' cool.

Wow that is awesome!! Glad no one was down by the pond at the time!!

I don't think we as humans really understand the power that's there! They say the immediate heat made by a bolt of lighting can be hotter then the surface of the sun!!

That's just hard to imagine!

RC