I wasn't paying attention. National Lightning Safety Awareness Week, June 24 - 30, 2018, ends Sunday. I hope I will be forgiven for not bringing this to everyone's attention sooner. Last year 30 people were killed by lightening. That's 2 1/2 people a month, or one person per week. OK, something is wrong with my math. I'm not sure what, but you get the idea. This is a deadly killer that affects all of us. Well, maybe not all of us, but 30 of us. Take time to talk to your families about it. You might want to talk to your doctor about it. We need a national discussion. It's time to come together as a nation.
http://www.lightningsafetycouncil.org/LSC-LSAW.html
Those are shocking statistics!
Thoughts and prayers to all the victims and their families.
A friend of mine, and I ... were on top of a mountain back in about 1977 ... and we got a hair raising experience ... we got down off that mountain very fast ... since we were the closest thing to the storm clouds, for miles around. This Sunday is the 2 year anniversary of my PC being fried by a lightning strike. Fortunately the HD wasn't ruined. I had a friend do a Dr Frankenstein and put my old HD in a new body (same model PC). Igor ... more voltage!
I've had a couple of lightning incidents. My younger brother and one of my sisters were swimming across a lake when a storm blew in. Lightning hit close by and I was shocked through my legs, my brother was shocked through his chest and my sister wasn't affected. My brother was barely able to make it to shore. My brother and I are atheists and my sister is a devout Christian. Coincidence? or THE HAND OF GOD!
Another time I was talking with my father on the phone, gazing out the window, and saw lightning strike a tree in my front yard. The tree literally exploded and caught fire and the top thirty feet fell away from the house.
I've been caught by fast moving lightning storms on the very tops of mountain ridges 4 times that I can remember. It's quite an experience. One of the times, I was frightened out of my wits, but no one was injured during any of the events. I don't know why I wasn't frightened the other times. It was just that once.
Y'all are as lucky as I and my friend were. The stroke didn't fall, it just was looking forward to it ...
There are forest rangers who have been struck more than once ;-((
Just remember that lightening strikes are from god. So don't go putting a lightening rod on your property. That is a sure ticket to hell, as Ben Franklin can attest to; many many preachers informed him of his devilish ways of inventing the lightening rod; he is now rotting in hell for sure--I mean, for sure!
I was wondering why we don't see lightening rods on houses anymore. I was told that 20th century houses with electricity are grounded and no longer build up the static electrical charge that attracts lightening. I'm guessing lighting rods were nothing more than a way of grounding a house. But aren't trees grounded, or does grounding require a material that has a high degree of electrical conductivity? Wood and tree roots are not the right grounding material? My understanding of this is very fuzzy. Where's my google button?
Ah ha! One source in Google says:
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/05/29/good-question-why-dont-you-see-lightning-rods-on-homes/
QuoteIt’s the suspected culprit in fires that torched a Minneapolis church, a $1 million home in Hudson, Wis., and several other metro homes over the weekend â€" 30 million volts of electricity shooting through the sky.
Such a dramatic situation, it provoked dozens of viewers to email asking: Why don’t we see lightning rods on homes anymore?
“They’re hard to see,†said Doug Franklin, president of Thompson Lightning Protection in St. Paul.
Franklin said his company probably installs on about 100 homes in the Twin Cities every year, largely new construction. But the rods aren’t the 4-feet tall monsters of old.
“We’ve stepped on our own toes, because the appearance isn’t there, people don’t notice them,†Franklin said.
Today’s lightning systems are made up of tiny, 10-inch rods, which are spread out every 20 feet. Thick gauge cable connects the rods, sending the lightning bolt straight to the ground.
What if you just had one or two big lightning rods?
“It’d be a waste of money,†Franklin said. “It would probably hit somewhere else.â€
On average, Minnesota has 40 thunderstorm days a year: 40 days when lightning could hit your home.
Compare that to California, which has about 5 thunderstorm days a year, and Florida, which has 100 days.
The Insurance Federation of Minnesota reports the number of claims paid for lightning damage to homes was up 15 percent from 2009 to 2010. Insurers in Minnesota paid on about 4,000 lighting claims in 2010, a total of $20.7 million.
“High objects, edges, ridges, corners, those are the places on buildings that get hit,†Franklin said.
The business of lightning protection is largely focused on big-dollar commercial building jobs. Every skyscraper in both downtowns has rods, and according to Franklin, they all get hit every year.
“Right now residential is 15-20 percent of our business, max,†he said. “The rest is schools, hospitals, churches.â€
A simple rambler with 4 lightning rods might start at around $2,500, a bigger system with more chimneys and more corners could run closer to $4,000-$5,000, and even higher, he said.
Is it worth it?
“It depends on how much peace of mind you want during storms,†Franklin said.
If homes in your area have been hit before, he said you could be at risk.
“Those are warning shots â€" means you’re in a vulnerable area,†Franklin said.
If your home is at the top of a hill, or the tallest among shorter homes on a block, or surrounded by a wide-open swath of land, you are also at a higher risk, he said.
One of my brothers has been struck by lightning 3 times the first time he was a boy scout counselor and he got knocked off the picnic table and got up and started running and 300 kids chase him through the woods for about 3 hours before we finally caught him
I'm surprised that this many people in a relatively small group have experienced lightening directly on their bodies. Or even know someone that has.
Quote from: Mike Cl on June 30, 2018, 09:06:05 AM
Just remember that lightening strikes are from god. So don't go putting a lightening rod on your property. That is a sure ticket to hell, as Ben Franklin can attest to; many many preachers informed him of his devilish ways of inventing the lightening rod; he is now rotting in hell for sure--I mean, for sure!
As an American revolutionary, he certainly was from Hell. Except the French girls said he was from Heaven ;-)
Quote from: SGOS on June 30, 2018, 09:22:00 AM
I was wondering why we don't see lightening rods on houses anymore. I was told that 20th century houses with electricity are grounded and no longer build up the static electrical charge that attracts lightening. I'm guessing lighting rods were nothing more than a way of grounding a house. But aren't trees grounded, or does grounding require a material that has a high degree of electrical conductivity? Wood and tree roots are not the right grounding material? My understanding of this is very fuzzy. Where's my google button?
Some say I know nothing, because I am a theist ;-)
However, being right across from the Facility Dept at work I overhear stuff ... our building is carefully grounded, all around. Both static electricity (poor grounding) and lightning are havoc with high speed computer networks (Cat 6). All medical equipment has to be properly grounded before it touches a patient, or it can stop their heart. We have tall radio tower however right next to our building. It does attract lightning ... and runners can spawn off it and strike the nearby buildings. Usually we loose digital phones that way, but not too many PCs. The lightning that destroyed my PC at home two years ago (second PC I have lost to lightning) ... could have "grounded" thru either the power cord or the RJ45 that carries my network from the wall. Now when storms come, I disconnect both.
In a rain storm you have both positive and negative lightning. The positive goes from the ground up, the more common negative comes down to the ground. And yes, usually once the air is ionized, you get multiple strokes within a second or two. Wet trees and objects are much better conductors. If you have a dry lightning stroke (in a desert away from the rain falling) it has less current, but that won't matter to what it strikes.
On lightning arrestors. Before the 20th century, and before 3 phase AC power (DC current in NE) ... your house/business had no proper grounding. Now you do. The electrical wiring in your building acts as the preferred path for discharge. Like the bumper designed to crumble, the electrical equipment dies for your sins, rather than you. Early AC only had two wires, not three (for single phase AC taken off a three phase transformer) ... having a proper ground is even better than single phase AC (which would have a distant ground somewhere near the transformer. The third wire gets the grounding much closer to you and your electrics, making a better ground.
Don't even ask what "sprites" are ... particularly if you fly in airplanes or space shuttles.
I recall reading once that, had Franklin conducted his famous lightning experiment as he described it, it would have likely killed him... Not that I'm going to duplicate it to check either way...
Quote from: Cavebear on July 02, 2018, 02:00:11 AM
I recall reading once that, had Franklin conducted his famous lightning experiment as he described it, it would have likely killed him... Not that I'm going to duplicate it to check either way...
At the very least he was insulated ... or conducted it from a safe distance, not like the patriotic drivel pictures we were given.
Here's a good account of Franklin's experiment:
Benjamin Franklin and the Kite Experiment (https://www.fi.edu/benjamin-franklin/kite-key-experiment)
Quote from: Cavebear on July 02, 2018, 02:00:11 AM
I recall reading once that, had Franklin conducted his famous lightning experiment as he described it, it would have likely killed him... Not that I'm going to duplicate it to check either way...
He was indoors when he was flying the kite, IIRC.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on July 02, 2018, 02:50:31 PM
He was indoors when he was flying the kite, IIRC.
(http://pietmondriaan.com/pm/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/kite1-500x426.jpg)
Your kite is so small ... did you hire the Spinal Tap choreographers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyh1Va_mYWI
It only looks small because it's so far away...
Quote from: Unbeliever on July 02, 2018, 07:10:21 PM
It only looks small because it's so far away...
Well that is an interesting "perspective" ;-)
I'll have to dig out the video I shot about ten years ago; there was quite a storm in the area and I was shooting the lightning, and completely by chance happened to catch the entire life cycle of a bolt. In the space of about 20 frames there was one frame with the stepped leader (https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/lightning3.htm) appearing from the clouds, a couple frames of a positive streamer (https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/lightning4.htm) crawling up the side of the building next door (about ten meters away), followed by a lightning bolt about a mile away connecting with the precise spot the stepped leader had appearedâ€"fortunately not from the streamer right in front of me.
All of that in less than a second. Alas, not in glorious HD, but I caught it. :)
Here's a great slo mo vid of a bolt of lightning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dukkO7c2eUE
That's a keeper.
Quote from: Munch on July 02, 2018, 06:57:30 PM
(http://pietmondriaan.com/pm/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/kite1-500x426.jpg)
They had invented windows by that time.
Regular lightning with sprites at the same time ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E14OZ95hqGA
These are dangerous to airplanes and re-entering space craft. The ionosphere needs to discharge, too.
In Unbelievers slow motion film, aren't those ball-lightings forming in the path of the main bold?
Yeah, and apparently the first one to contact the ground gives a path to the rest of the bolt.
Quote from: Unbeliever on July 03, 2018, 07:34:33 PM
Yeah, and apparently the first one to contact the ground gives a path to the rest of the bolt.
Same thing happens if you touch a live wire ... if you are the best conductor, it will chose you.
A compilation of some films of rare occurring ball lightning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vV3KxQ16c
Quote from: Munch on July 02, 2018, 06:57:30 PM
(http://pietmondriaan.com/pm/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/kite1-500x426.jpg)
That is amazing. I didn't know so small a kite could be functional. On the other hand, it might be a good still picture of a small kite flying around wildly.