Lightning strike

[Ianab]

Not at our place luckily....

But was visiting the parents today and although they had power back there was all sorts of activity on the street outside. Dad saw the Flash/Bang of a near miss, best I can figure it hit a power pole about 3 houses down and travelled down a feeder cable that switched the overhead to underground to feed another transformer at the end of the street. They had the cable disconnected and a big portable diesel genset parked beside the transformer, so they were planning on a couple of days to fix the problem.

Looking at the survey guys marking out utilities on the road, and directional drilling gear, I'm guessing the underground 11kv cable cable got fried, and they are going to directional drill in a new one.

It always makes me chuckle when people say they have a surge protector to stop lightning taking out their computers... A direct hit can take out an 11kv power cable, not just the switchgear or transformer, it actually wrecked the cable the size of your arm!!!

That hits any puny electronic box, and the magic smoke gets out of all sorts of things....

Ian

[Magicman]

You are very correct.  Surge protectors are good for just that, surge.  Nothing will stop or change the direction of a bolt of lightning.

I feel like that I may can control my destiny a bit with  wind or water, but a lightning strike is beyond my control.  There are certain sensible things that we can do like staying off of the water and not getting under trees, but lightning still is in control.   :-\

[Norm]

Yeah I'm learning that there's not much that can stop it short of unplugging everything. We sit on a hill so twice this year we've had lightning strikes that have taken out various items. Last time took out my NAS which you would think I'd be smart enough to back up.....

[easymoney]

lightning can do weird things. a few weeks ago a thunder storm came through my neighborhood in the night. i got up to no water in the house. lightning had hit a tree up the street and traveled through the roots and shattered the plastic  water main serving several houses. that is the second time it has happened in my area.

[JV]

Lightning can do some real damage.  Our oldest son is remodeling the house on our farm next door.  About a month ago, during a storm, lightning struck the base of a tree about 50 feet from the house.  It excavated a large hole and threw dirt and gravel against the siding and peppered the soffit.  The concussion blew nearly every window out on that side of the house.  It followed a large root towards the house and arced up to a metal outside entry light blowing it and a large amount of siding off.  Inside, it blew the switch cover into the next room along with a large chunk of drywall.  It followed the wiring to the distribution box and destroyed it.  Total damage was over $10k.  When our son got home, he called my wife in shock.  Fortunately, he was at work when it hit.  Lightning during that same storm caused a lot of damage for miles.

[sawguy21]

I was at work when lightning hit a transformer less than a mile away. That was a BIG bang, the building shook and the ozone smell was very sharp. Sure glad it was not any closer.

[jdonovan]

Yeah I'm learning that there's not much that can stop it short of unplugging everything. We sit on a hill so twice this year

That bolt just traveled MILES to hit next to the house. I really doubt the 2 feet from the plug to the appliance is going to matter much.

What the unplug/disconnect/switch-off will help with is the few-thousand to 10-thousand volt surges, that are a bit too large for the surge suppression devices to deal with, but are too low in voltage to jump a breaker or switch that is off.

[Faron]

Early Sunday morning lightning hit a light pole about 18 yards behind our house. I have had the power to this pole disconnected for a long time.   It split the top of the pole and knocked the light off it.  15 yards away is a barn full of hay, with copper wires between the barn and pole.  During the storm, 27 head of heifers were between the pole and barn.  None were hurt, and were calm after the strike.  We thought we were pretty lucky.  This morning I found we were not as lucky as we thought.  Behind the barn is our horse pasture.  Sunday morning  I thought I saw all the horses near our pond.  This morning I went out to check on them, and found one dead, and a second not in good shape.  He holds his head kind of at an angle, and is very unsteady on this feet.  I do not think he is seeing at a distance very well.  I think  lightning got them both, killing one and injuring the other.  The third is ok.  I am trying to decide whether to put my old horse down, :( or let him go a while and see if he improves.  He is 28 years old, so I am afraid he won't recover very well.

This is at least the fifth lightning strike in our yard since we moved here, 33  years ago.

[Kcwoodbutcher]

Give the horse a while to recover. Had the same thing happen to one of the mares. She stumbled around for a week but then made a full recovery.  Lost a mare several years ago to lightning. Out of a herd of about thirty she was the only one who had shoes on. The rest were fine.

[sandhills]

Lightning hit my dads house 6 or so years ago and although it didn't ruin the wiring they were having trouble for months afterward with appliances going bad, it even ruined three electric fencers that were scattered around the farm in other out buildings.  A good friend of ours owns a feedlot and had a heifer get hit and live through it, she wasn't a pretty site and they put her down a few days later, she literally got cooked from the inside out.

[tyb525]

Our fence charger will get hit once or twice a year. The lightning will hit the fence who knows where, and travel back to the charger. It also likes to go through our phone lines and fry our phones. We haven't had any appliances go bad yet (knock on wood)

[WildDog]

 



Took this pic at work of a couple of cows that weren't so lucky.

[Patty]

We had lightening strike one of our yard trees while our dog slept at its base. The dog was killed instantly. It looked like he was still laying there asleep when we found him. We couldn't figure out what had happened until we saw chunks of tree bark laying around that had been blown off the tree.

[Faron]

Our fence charger will get hit once or twice a year. The lightning will hit the fence who knows where, and travel back to the charger. It also likes to go through our phone lines and fry our phones. We haven't had any appliances go bad yet (knock on wood)

Sounds familiar.  We just got one charger back from the shop, and took three in for repairs. :-\

[Bobus2003]

Lightning struck a tree 15 feet or so from my Processor.. Completely Destroyed the tree, fearing it affected my machine since the Computer screen for my Processor head won't come on, and the machine won't start.. Gonna have to do some investigating to see if it popped some relays/fuses or if i have a piece of scrap steel.. Hoping to make it back down in the next week or so.. its about 55 miles away

[SPIKER]

we have a lot of processors on our directional drilling equipment we design.   we have had a good bit of lighting troubles on them the biggest is the J1939 CAN communications part of the processor which is taken out as that is low voltage so any stray above 50 so volts will pop the CAN transmitter in the processor though usually leaves the rest of the processors ok.   

Couple years back my sisters place was hit (actually pole 3 houses down) burnt the house down where the pole was skipped any damages on the home in-between and blew her main breaker box off basement wall set it on fire & burnt wires all way into roof.   Luckly they were home & had several dry fire extinguishers...   home was pretty good needed new shingles anyway but insurance put on hole house worth with new elec box & several appliances.   TV was OK and was on/plugged in at time using a 20 buck surge suppressor.!  go figure.

In high school we had a bad storm I was looking out window saw bolt hit a swamp elm about 50 yards away.   it peeled the bark off in ~1" square strips the length of the tree about 4 or 5 evenly spaced around it laid that tree open like a big upside down umbrella !

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