[Heineken]

A new study by NASA suggests that future thunderstorms will be more violent, with more wicked lightning and giant hail:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070830/ap_ ... ate_change

I've been thinking about lightning lately. Recently we had a pretty bad thunderstorm. I was walking in the woods yesterday and discovered that a bolt of lightning from the storm had struck a huge yellow-poplar tree and, basically, partly exploded it. Yard-long daggers of fresh white wood were strewn around up to a hundred feet from the tree, and a three-inch-deep gash ran down almost the entire length of the trunk. The leaves at the top were singed black. (A shame---it was a beautiful (and valuable) tree; why couldn't it have been a junky tree instead?)

A number of our trees bear lightning scars, but this was the first time I'd seen the immediate damage, and it was a good lesson in lightning's power. I need to take Zeus's bolts more seriously! Too often in the past, I've virtually ignored them, sometimes even continuing to work outside in thunderstorms. One of my favorite activities when I was younger was jogging through thunderstorms! Crazy fool.

Do any of you have any "lightning tales" you'd care to share?

[dunewalker]

Back in the summer of 1967 while working as a backcountry ranger in the (now) Golden Trout Wilderness in the California sierras, I was riding my horse one afternoon through an intense thunderstorm. We were traversing a foxtail pine forest at 10,000 feet elevation, on our way back to my station at Tunnel Meadows when a bolt of lightning struck the tree next to the trail! Both the horse & I jumped about 3 feet up as we were sprayed with bark. We made it back to the cabin safely within a couple of hours, thoroughly drenched but otherwise unharmed. As I sit here in my desert cabin tonight, typing this 40 years later, the window is periodically lit up by lightning flashes and the windmill is howling.

[jboogy]

It's 11:39 here now , thurs. night. A pretty nasty storm is just finishing up (I hope ), about an hour ago I had a bolt hit somewhere very close , the lightning and thunder happened simultaneousely and the crack and the volume were unreal . There will be damage to something close by . I'm looking forward to seeing where it hit tomorrow.

[emersonbiggins]

Not that I am at all doubtful of the veracity of climate change, but it makes me wonder that the longer we keep weather records, should we really be all that surprised to see more extreme weather-type events? After all, the 100-year and 500-year floods eventually come, regardless of the miniscule probability they are assigned, a number that is probably skewed due to the relative lull in extreme weather over the last 100-150 years.

I, for one, do not look forward to the increased probability of ball lightning or 500-year floods.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('emersonbiggins', 'N')ot that I am at all doubtful of the veracity of climate change, but it makes me wonder that the longer we keep weather records, should we really be all that surprised to see more extreme weather-type events? After all, the 100-year and 500-year floods eventually come, regardless of the minuscule probability they are assigned, a number that is probably skewed due to the relative lull in extreme weather over the last 100-150 years.

I, for one, do not look forward to the increased probability of ball lightning or 500-year floods.

[Pops]

I have a couple, when I was 18, I was moving my meager belongings from one apartment to another in Salt Lake City during a storm. A bolt shot from the light fixture to the bullnose molding on the step down to the small dining room; I was about 6 feet away. It must not have been very powerful because it only blew the fuses and soiled my pants.


The first big storm after we moved here was a doozy. Lightning struck close enough to the house that static electricity ignited a propane leak under the kitchen causing an explosion and small fire. I had just cut an access hole right where the fire started and was able to put it out. We turned off the valve at the tank, called the fire dept. and waited in a shed squatting on couch cushions till they arrived – the storm was so close you could hear the sizzle before each strike.

Next day, you could see where the explosion had blown dust out from under every baseboard. Luckily the propane tank was empty except for fumes and it turned out the copper tubing propane line under the kitchen was lying on the dirt and covered by an old carpet – it looked like Swiss cheese.

Needless to say I have re-plumbed every inch of tubing with black pipe...

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 't')he storm was so close you could hear the sizzle before each strike.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '.')..It's eerie.

[jdumars]

been struck twice 20 years apart. no fun.

[jboogy]

I'd be very interested in hearing the particulars of that , jdumars. would you mind indulging us ? I took a basic wiring class years ago and they showed a safety film that had photos of a guy that had assumed the stuff he was about to work on wasn't live . BIG mistake , I think it was at least 10,000 volts and it took chunks from this dude , saw other pics on the internet of a guy who was trying to steal power from a transformer that was carrying 40,000 volts , basically melted the parts of him that went to ground, very gruesome but interesting, missing one arm and a leg that seperated from the torso . When we would pull main feeds to condo buildings in fl. I would watch FPL disconnect and then reconnect power by pulling oil bathed fuses from the transformers . You've never seen guys with assholes wired this tight before , These dudes did not smile , talk , laugh or fuck around at all when they did their shit , and if you watched them you were wise to not make a sound or move too much at the critical time.I've messed with 200 amps a couple times when upgrading someones service and that sharpened my focus big time.

[Heineken]

I was electrocuted (playing with an outlet) when I was a little boy in Austria; I remember the hideous, jangling sensation to this day. It's the worst.

[TITAN]

I heart thunderstorms...

I go to great lengths to watch them, have come close to getting struck several times...Hasn't happened, yet...

I have seen lightning so close that I could see hundreds of tiny orange flames/static cirling around the blue bolt, and it always seems to be in slow motion. And the sound from such close bolts is distinctively different than even ones just a couple hundred yards away.

It's like shooting a high powered rifle right next to your ear.

[Pops]

I have been bit a couple of times by household current, always my own stupidity, I’m afraid of big current though.

But one time that is kind of funny in retrospect was when I was a carpet layer in my late teens and kicking in a room in a new construction tract house. The wiring was roughed in but not finished, I could tell someone had started the finish because some outlets were installed and others not.

For those to smart to have never laid carpet, on small rooms you get down on hands and knees, place a tool which has teeth to grip the carpet at one end and a pad that you slam your knee against on the other, the carpet stretches and gets stuck on exposed nails on a strip of wood nailed close to the wall.

Anyway, I was ruining my knee kicking in this room and since my head was close to the wall when I came to an outlet box with exposed wires my noodle made contact with the hot and neutral at the same time….

You guessed it, the circuit was hot and it sat me back like a tap from a $2 tire iron.

I packed my tools and never worked for that contractor again.

I was a lot mellower tho…

….

What was the question?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')What was the question?

[PenultimateManStanding]

OK, I do have a lightning tale now that I think of it. About 25 miles to the east of me is a town called Lakeside, CA. I lived there for a number of years. Once there was a thunderstorm and a guy went out in his front yard to watch it. He got hit and killed by a thunderbolt. It was all over the local news. Talk about odds.

[jboogy]

I've noticed since moving from PA. I've gotten paranoid? about being outside during thunderstorms . The lightning in the south is a different beast from what's up north , it's almost as if I'm sensing a certain malevolence in the lightning here . It's my imagination I'm sure but yet.....

[TonisD]

Here in Estonia, this year has seen some really wild thunderstorms that were not present before. We usually have a week or two of very active thunder&lightning period in July, but this summer, all the bets were off. It actually started in June, when the most insane thundercloud I have ever seen traversed right over our capital - it was like a humongous chimney that had lightning inside of it and also some bolts going outside, it felt as something out of a NatGeo documentary.

Two weeks ago, the fiercest lightning ever was also around these parts. Two very powerful clouds were running side by side across the country and the mayhen that ensued was to be honest, frightening. I had never before seen horisontal strikes across the sky from horizon to horizon. There was a strike every 5-10 seconds and the thundering itself had the windows shaking everywhere - this lasted for 3 hours straight.

I've also been hit almost two times now, but luckily im still here

[PenultimateManStanding]

An average 90 people a year are killed by lightning in the US. 114 on average are killed each day in car crashes.

[jboogy]

Those odds are all well and good PMS , unless your one of the unfortunate few who have been " anointed " by the lightning Gods .