whats the closest lightning has been to you?

[kruzzen]

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?

[SLOweather]

During a summer in the mid '60s, in the midwest (Moline, IL) we were sitting down to Sunday dinner during a storm. The table was set at the front window of our living room.

Lightning struck the oak tree at the corner of the driveway and the street. It traveled on the outside of the tree down to about 10', and then circled around to the gas light by the driveway and to ground. The bolt blew chunks of bark off the tree. I remember it flying around the front yard.

That was about 50' from where we were sitting. Made a helluva bang...

[racenet]

I've been struck.  

I think that's about as close as you can get.  


Bob

[Mark / Ohio]

I've been struck.  

I think that's about as close as you can get.  


Bob

Glad your here to tell us about it!  

So how long did it take for you to stop glowing in the dark?    

I've never been close during a strike.  But as my job is the guy fixing the burned up electronics after words, I've seen the damaged trees, chimneys, cracked driveway next to a tree that was struck, fuses blown out of electric boxes, and the best part, surge suppressors melted and blown apart.  Been a number of years ago now but I saw one TV they had to put out with a fire extinguisher and a VCR with a hole burned clean through the metal cabinet top above the tuner and the shield on the tuner next to the top.  Causes one to pause and think and be a little more careful when you see up close what it can do.

[weathergirl]

Several years ago, a huge lightning bolt came down right between my apartment building and the one next door, the buildings were very close together. I was inside my apartment and saw it right outside the window, it was very loud and it made me jump!

[racenet]

Glad your here to tell us about it!  

So how long did it take for you to stop glowing in the dark?    

Never glowed in the dark, but I do have quite an electric personallity!  

Thank god it wasn't a complete, direct strike. I'd be a crispy critter. It struck a barbed wire fence I was working on, a few poles down. The jolt threw me at least 10 feet back (so I've been told). Still have messed up feeling in my right arm & leg. I was lucky. A lady down the fence line wasn't as lucky. She was killed by the jolt while going to feed her horses.

That was one messed up day.  


Bob

[katlon]

8/24/06
Sitting on a "butt" box splicing cable for Ma Bell on a drizzly day with no thunderstorms in the area when out of nowhere a bolt of lightning hit very close to me, ran into the cable I was splicing, ran in and out of me and came out the other end of the cable in a fireball about the same size as a beach ball I was told. Burned and blew off the middle finger of my right hand. Almost a year later I have had over 1700 severe headaches, constant ringing of the ears, memory loss, severe lack of concentration but I'm still here to tell about it, what little I can remember. I hope I never get quite that close again. I get quite freaky when a thunderstorm gets near but it has made me a weatherman wantabe.

Lonnie

[racenet]

Lonnie,

Well hello there fellow strike survivor!  


Bob

[katlon]

Hi Bob
Sorry it took so long to respond. Had a severe thunderstorm here this evening and it gets me in the "hide" mode. My wife just keeps saying "just watch tv Lonnie" but I can't do anything until that darn lightning and thunder are gone. I guess it gets easier with time but so far it still quite scary.

Lonnie

[racenet]

Let me tell ya, you will never get over it completely. It does get a little better with time though. My incident happened July 9, 1982 and to this day I still have a great respect for lightning. Storms don't scare me any longer, but I watch them like a hawk and take every precaution to avoid a possible repeat. It only takes a fraction of a second and that's what  scares me the most.

[kray1000]

Hi Bob
My wife just keeps saying "just watch tv Lonnie" but I can't do anything until that darn lightning and thunder are gone.

The first thing I do when I hear thunder is turn OFF the TVs.  When I was about 9, I lived next door to a woman who was washing dishes and listening to the TV when the TV took a direct strike during an approaching storm.  Later that same storm, lightning struck their well too.

When I was about 10, a large oak tree in my front yard was struck, with the lightning wrapping around the tree and throwing pieces of bark all over the yard and against our house, leaving a dent in the storm door.

My closest experience with lightning was similar to Ann-Marie's.  Sitting in an upstairs apartment, a huge bolt struck a telephone pole probably 30 feet from my building, setting off someone's car alarm.     Lightning came in on the cable and power lines, blowing out anything plugged in that had transformers on them.  There were several people in two buildings that had to have their televisions reset or serviced.  I actually heard the crash of the thunder before the lightning flash ever registered with my brain.  

A few years ago at my current residence, lightning struck a tree next door, throwing mud on their deck, ringing their door bell, running in on their cable and electric lines and blowing out several electronics and two televisions (but not their cable modem   ).  The wood smell near their tree lasted for several hours afterwards.

Although I've never been struck, I've had a fear of lightning since childhood.  You don't have to be struck to be afraid of it.    

To this day, when a storm gets within a few miles, I turn everything off including the central air conditioning.  I used to unplug things, too, until I felt a shock when unplugging the washing machine one day, with the storm still about 4 miles away.  

[mhweather]

Pulled into a Wawa to get some coffee, had a bolt strike a pole across the street (maybe 50yds away).  VERY loud and defintely scary!!!!  There were some cars at that intersection at the time, must have been quite a shock for them too!

[anvana]

I had lightning strike the electrical transformer in front of my house 3 years ago. Besides completely destroying the transformer, the field generated by the bolt was transferred into my house via one of my HF amateur radio antennas. Although the feedline was disconnected, it was not grounded.  (I just disconnected it and let it lay on the table.)

The charge welded together an antenna tuner, wattmeter, HF radio, power supply, and speaker into one unit. Plus, the feedline was welded fast to the side of the antenna tuner in two places.

The whole house had that wonderful odor of burning electronics and solder for days afterword. Needless to say, the gear was all smoked - including the antenna. Luckily, no one was hurt.

All my antennas are now properly grounded whenever they are not in use.

[ocala]

Saw this on Wunderground today. Pretty cool pic.
http://icons.wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/j/jajuvera/49.jpg

[Anole]

Just had a lightning strike on a tall coconut palm across the canal about 80 feet away!

[kruzzen]

Isn't it just wild that lightning can strike you 10 miles away from the storm!

[iic1tls]

My favorite memory of lightning comes from 1995 when I was returning home from Carrollton (Dallas suburb) on a rainy Saturday evening.  I was driving along a major highway about three miles north of Texas Stadium, and could see the stadium in the distance.

Lightning struck somewhere near the stadium, and I watched in amazement as *all* of the lights along the center of the highway suddenly burst into blue balls of lightning, and then blew out!     It was AMAZING!

Needless to say, that entire part of town was dark for several hours afterwards.    I guess lightning struck an electrical switching station, because of the scope of the outage.  Too, I had never seen the lights turn into blue balls like that, and then expire...

[Mark / Ohio]

.. I used to unplug things, too, until I felt a shock when unplugging the washing machine one day, with the storm still about 4 miles away. 

I was nailed by a good static shock unplugging my scanner antenna during an approaching storm.  I have a disconnect just inside the basement window for it.  I disconnect it and use a big alligator clip to short it to my disconnected shortwave wire antenna which is grounded outside.  The scanner antenna being small, I would have never guessed it to build up that much of a charge.  But it sets at the top of a 30' 3-leg tower so I think any corona build up on the tower must be discharging into it.  I used to drop the scanner coax into a mason jar during storms but found watching and listening to sparks jump between the center pin and shield during storms a little disconcerting.   

[Cienega32]

Some scary tales in this thread - congrats to the survivors.

I've always heard that if you can hear it, it can find you.

The closest for me was uneventful except for the xformer on the pole it hit down the street. This was decades ago, on Long Island, but we kids were outside, enjoying "the show" when a strike landed at that xformer. Man, what an explosion that was. It was a bit terrifying for us being we only ever heard the 'far-away' or overhead stuff. What a noise! It educates you real quick.

I had a modem get fried from a strike somewhere. A nice, new external 1200 baud. The tech for the company asked me if I had a strike - said he never saw anything like it. Everything was fried. I didn't have anything else damaged so the conclusion was it came thru the phone line.

While living in Las Vegas NV, we had a truck stop manager who was heavy into the HAM. He had an ant. tower on the roof with a fiberglass whip on it. That took a hit and we found pieces of it hundreds of feet away and all his equipment was fried. Scrambled the electronic cash registers as well.

Where I live now, the storms roll right over me. The skylites make for an eerie environment and when they get that close, I hit the breakers for the roof-top swamp cooler and for the pool pump. There's an old derelict, abandoned truck with well drill rigging in place down the street on BLM land that takes a hit from time to time. LOUD!!! Yup - educates you in respect for weather real quick.

I now also seem to get very 'religious' at that time as well. 

These storms out here are also the main reason why I opted for a solar powered, wireless Wx station.

[NeverWinter]

Well, I haven't been near any lightning yet. I don't know if I can stand to be near it or I'll just run away... Of course it is really an amazing experience if you happen or given the chance to know how does it feel to be near a lightning...

But I would choose that I won't be too close...

[NiceBill]

I was in my truck during a large storm.  I was stopped next to a line pole with a transformer on it.  The lightning hit the transformer and the world went blue.  Quite an experience.

Bill.>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[Garth Bock]

I was driving up I-39 years ago during a very heavy thunderstorm when lightning hit in a field next the ditch. The world went white and then I had dirt raining down on my van. I should have gone back the next day to see if a fulgarite had formed.

[StormAngel612]

I have been indirectly struck twice, and have just been too close on several occasions. The first and more significant time I was struck indirectly, I was trying to get inside - the door knob was a metal material, and just as I was about to open it, a bolt struck across the street.
Besides the scare, I was not expecting to feel any effects from it, however,a sharp pain ran from my hand through my left arm, and I was shocking everything/one I touched for the remainder of the evening. Lucky for me, the ache that accompanied it went away.  

Then one of the more significant times I was just too close, I was outside watching the end of a severe thunderstorm pass, when suddenly there was a loud clap further up, but directly above my head. I saw little white thread-like bolts less than 10ft above me, and became overwhelmed with nausea. The smell of sulfur just seemed to inhibit all of my senses..  Needless to say, I was done storm watching after that! 

[weatherforyou]

While we were camping near Newport, OR, a couple weeks ago we had three lightning strikes in the campground.  Since it was one in the morning it was very bright.  The whole day before that event the storm pretty much stayed off the coast and rumbled, so it was a noisy 24 hours.

A couple decades ago I was driving just east of Battle Mountain, NV, on I-80 and a bolt struck just to the right of my SUV.  The right speaker never sounded the same after that.   

I was at a transmitter site on top of a mountain west of Burney, CA, when a not only did it snow but a thunderstorm hit.  It hit the electrical line and blew out all the circuits in the generator transfer panel.  Had to leave the metal door cracked open so there was a little light in the building.  Every time just before the tower next to the building would get hit a small arc would go up the door frame (Jacob's Ladder effect).  I thought it was pretty cool... the guy with me thought we were going to die. 

Looking forward to the next lightning experience... 

[GregJ]

About 25 years ago I was fishing out in front of our place in a 14 foot aluminum boat.  There were two of us in the boat, standing up, holding 9 foot fishing poles about 300 yards off shore.  We had a bolt hit, at most, about 100 feet from us.  The explosion almost knocked us over.  The flash blinded us.  Every hair on my body was standing at attention.  Once we finally realized what happened, we laid down in the boat, brought our lines in and headed for shore, staying VERY low. 

To this day, I still don't know why that bolt didn't hit us.  We were definitely the highest point in the area in a very well grounded boat.  I am REALLY glad this doesn't happen often around here.

Greg