whats the closest lightning has been to you?

[AdamGH]

I was 18 and was working on my Mustang in the garage during a pretty powerful lightning storm when everything went blue and followed by a loud bang.  A pine tree 10 feet from the garage had been hit and my rigged antenna for my radio that was in the tree brought some of it into the garage and fried my radio. 

[WilliamTobler]

I was struck.  About 15 years ago.

A storm blew in before I got home and blew down a tree across our horse fence.  The storm cleared, and my wife was anxious that I fix the fence.  Just as I was cleaning up and leaving the field, the next edition of the storm blew in.  A lightning bolt came down and hit the ground about 1/4 mile away, but this was inductively picked up by the wire of the field fence, and I was standing about 5 feet away.

A fire ball erupted from the fence and came at me and hit me in the palms of my outstretched hands.  Threw me back about 20 feet while my wife watched horrified from inside the house.

My palms were burnt, and my hair has gone from dirty blond to very white.

The electric fence charger no longer worked (obviously).
When I opened up the case, the insides were empty.  The case had dents in it from the inside out.
It also took out the controller on our deep well pump.

[W Thomas]

That sounds like almost too close for comfort!!!
I had a battery charger that survived as well as your fence charger..
It was one of those maintenance type chargers and was keeping a bank of deep cycle batteries charged for
back up of a couple repeaters and one remote base station at a mtn top site. I discovered early that one of my channels was down as well as some others.
My new Kenwood repeater didn't handle the strike good either! The only thing it didn't fry black was the power supply and it was still perfect 

The charger was just a shell that rattled a little! The rattles were pieces of capacitor cans that were rolling around inside it.

I can't really say I am scared of lightning but I am very respectful of it!!  I got popped once sitting  on a truck tailgate  when lightning struck a tree about 150 feet away.
I guess it was just a transient but it was enough of a jolt to knock my big butt on up in the bed of truck and had me wondering what the heck happened!

Wayne
www.smythweather.net
cw8217

[billzilla]

My car got hit during a chase once by lightning, shut it off and cracked the windshield. I sat there trying to start it as a funnel touched down and started moving towards me. I got it started and got to safety minutes before almost getting hurt!

How about you all?

In the mid 80's I had just stepped off the ham radio tower we had constructed all day.  AS I TOOK THAT STEP lightning hit the antenna at the top of the tower.

As Maxwell Smart would say, Missed me by THAT much."

[W Thomas]

That WAS close!!
Sometimes those summer storms can brew up so quick you never know they are there till something like this happens.


Wayne
www.smythweather.net
CW8217

[rikostan]

Walking along a canal in Mesa AZ as a teenager. I looked at my long haired friend. He looked at me and started to laugh... Seems both of us had our hair standing straight up. The lightning hit just a few yards from us causing us both to jump out of our skins and start running. I was running blind for probably 45 seconds to a minute, but luckily I ran the right way.

[W Thomas]

Talk about too close for comfort !!!!


Wayne
www.smythweather.net
CW8217

[Mark / Ohio]

... I was running blind for probably 45 seconds to a minute, but luckily I ran the right way.

Those lightning bolts run pretty fast when they are chasing you.   

[vader]

I was just searching Google to find a place so I could post a question about Thunder when I found this Forum and this thread. What a cool place this is.

I was struck by lightning, nice to see there are others here that have had the same experience.

I was hiking to the top of a 14teener in Colorado when a quick storm moved in. The skies went from sunny to cloudy and then it started Snowing with only about 5 minutes warning. Since it was snow, Lightning was the furthest thing from my mind. Man, what a jolt. Now when I go I pay attention to the signs and go in the morning and not the afternoon. I got lucky; there were no long lasting effects, only a headache that lasted a few days. The funny thing is from the time I got hit until the time I realized what hit me must have only been a few seconds, but time dragged out and I can remember every thought that occurred during those few seconds like it had lasted a minute or so. Did anybody else feel this way?

[offroadjosh]

first time strike knocked me and my uncle over and it was roughly 10ft  away..(hit the 4wheeler i was sitting on not 30sec before hand...
2nd 50ft away if that.... was walking across the sreet in town after a truck pull and monster truck show:P
3rd time was on my deck and it hit our roof... lol



Josh

[kray1000]

first time strike knocked me and my uncle over and it was roughly 10ft  away..(hit the 4wheeler i was sitting on not 30sec before hand...
2nd 50ft away if that.... was walking across the sreet in town after a truck pull and monster truck show:P
3rd time was on my deck and it hit our roof... lol

Well, we can see why you like high places so much... 

[offroadjosh]

first time strike knocked me and my uncle over and it was roughly 10ft  away..(hit the 4wheeler i was sitting on not 30sec before hand...
2nd 50ft away if that.... was walking across the sreet in town after a truck pull and monster truck show:P
3rd time was on my deck and it hit our roof... lol

Well, we can see why you like high places so much... 

haha:P

[Anthony]

Haven't ever been and I hope I never am. But I do ocassionally spot storms. So you never know.

[blackjack52]

I was watching this show, Million to One, which talks about odds.  Ray, a Forest Ranger in VA, was struck 7X. 3 were while performing ranger duties. 2 times, he was struck in the same part of the body...his head, while driving his truck.  He busted all kinds of odds. At the age of 72/73, he shot himself in the head...nobody wanted anything to do w/him.  Now that's close.


Closest for me was in NM. In the house, my wife and I sensed thisreally weird feeling, then crack.  It was about 20ft away.  My wife hair down to her waist...it was all standing straight up.  I was laughing, she was crying. Then I was crying for laughing.

[roakey]

This is a very old memory…  It was the mid-60s and I was about 10 years old.  I was sleeping on a screened-in porch on Crystal Lake near Enfield, New Hampshire.  There were thunderstorms in the distance.  It was dark out, but there was enough light that I could make out the trees outside the porch even without the occasional “flashbulb” lighting of the distant thunderstorm.

Silently, and without any fanfare there was a blue-white ball of light that went floating by horizontally in front of the porch, maybe 20 feet away.  It struck a pine tree and there was a faint sizzle sound, and it disappeared.  It all happened in maybe 5 seconds.

Except for the fact that I got to witness real ball lightning, it was all quite calm and sedentary.

Roak

[blackjack52]

That would be cool to see.

[Mark / Ohio]

....
Except for the fact that I got to witness real ball lightning, it was all quite calm and sedentary...

I've never seen it but others around here have talked about ball lightning.  A neighbor fellow that worked field service used to talk about a factory he made frequent trips to make repairs from lightning damage to equipment.  Said the employees told him it was not uncommon to have a storm up in the hills that railroad tracks passed through next to the building.  They said more then once they seen the lighting come bouncing down the tracks and go into the factory.

Repeat strikes like that are as interesting as they are scary.  I recall one customer of mine many years ago took two hits within 3 days.  Another took two hits within a week.  We'd just repaired their TV and installed a new surge suppressor for them (cheap and low quality single outlet type like was sold back in the 1980's) when the next week it hit again burning up the surge suppressor and finished the TV off for good that time.  Couple other people we would have to send their satellite receivers off for repair at least once if not twice a summer for surge and lightning damage.  They had tall trees next to them that would get the direct hit.  The one guy happened to be looking out the  window and watched it then come across the yard following the line and pipe from his well which was also by the dish and slam into the side of the house right below the window and continue on to fry the TV and satellite receiver he was standing about 4' from when at the window. 

I'm sure that must have altered his daily movement schedule.   

[W Thomas]

I have heard about ball lightning all my life but have never been..fortunate..per say to see it .
Seems like I remember reading a book on the subject way back in the dark ages now and they referred to ball lighting as Kugelblitz 
What a name for lightning.

I am a firm believer that mineral content in the ground of an area seems to alter the way lightning behaves around there..
We had one remote radio site that used to be a CATV head end site years ago and there was evidently some sort of iron type alloy in the ground there. We
found such when pouring the base for a tower. It seemed like all it took for a major lightning hit there was a black cloud to blow over anywhere near it

Must have been why the cable co moved...it about broke their bank

[weathermiz]

20 or so feet... i was woke up by lightning that struck a tree in my backyard during a large thunderstorm in Abilene, TX

[Jim18655]

Lightning stuck in the back yard several years ago about 75' from my bedroom. It hit right on the underground dog fence line. Blew a hole in the ground that I needed half a 5 gallon bucket of dirt to fill it in. Burned the 16AWG wires right off of the fence unit and left a black mark on the block wall. Fence unit was about 300'  away on the short side of the circuit.
You also don't need lightning to  charge an antenna line. Dry snow and wind will also cause sparks to jump from the center pin to ground. An old friend was a radio engineer at a broadcast transmitter and had an assistant get thrown away from the tower by a static shock on a windy night because he touched the tower before grounding it.

[Mark / Ohio]

.... An old friend was a radio engineer at a broadcast transmitter and had an assistant get thrown away from the tower by a static shock on a windy night because he touched the tower before grounding it.

Friend of mine was in the transmitter building of a broadcast tower when a storm came up and the tower took a hit.  Said there was sparks along the ceiling and all went dark.  Shook him up pretty good I think.  Amazing part was he watched as the standby generator kicked in, transmitter booted back up and everything came back online working.  Must have had a darn good arrestor setup on it or it took more of a glancing strike.  His boss told him after that to make sure to get the heck out of the transmitter shack and set in the truck the next time lightning came into the area.  You don't want to be in there if the transmitter lights up!         

[W Thomas]

You also don't need lightning to  charge an antenna line. Dry snow and wind will also cause sparks to jump from the center pin to ground. An old friend was a radio engineer at a broadcast transmitter and had an assistant get thrown away from the tower by a static shock on a windy night because he touched the tower before grounding it.

Absolutely!  Induction /static charges are a wonderful thing 
I have experienced that first hand myself!  Easy to forget about that possibility when doing
something pressing.

[Lautermilch]

11 years old in Sandy Springs, GA and watching Gilligan's Island with some other neighborhood kids in the house across the street.

A bolt comes into the garage next to where we were sitting and hit the re-barb in the cement floor and blew out a five inch chunk of cement.

I was about nine feet for that instant and along with the others ran downstairs not knowing that had happend.

[LarsWX]

I was about 8 or 9 years old and we lived on top a hill in the woods, during a t-storm a bolt hit a tree 20 feet from the house and blew the vent cap off the septic system, needless to say the crack and noise of that was something to remember, amazing that the only damage was a killed tree and almost every light that was turned on at the time, I will never forget that...

[port1]

Today was the closest!
Hailstorm right overhead, with plenty of lightning.
Sooo interesting...watched it from my porch, then ran inside to prepare the CoCoRaHS Intense Precipitation Report.
Way cool!