Thunderstorm prep

[bykfixer]

One afternoon when I was a little kid my dad got up from the supper table to go roll up the windows of the family car during a thunderstorm. Both my parents smoked cigarettes. A few minutes later he had not returned. My mom said for me to go see where my dad was.
"go check on your father". "yes mam".
"well did do see your father?" "yes mam he's outside laying on the ground smoking".
"why would he be laying down in a thunderstorm?" see says. "I don't know mom but he is and there's smoke coming from him"………
He'd been hit by lightning.

So we always unplugged the tv and all radios back then.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Wow! Your dad got hit by lightning? Did he survive?

 

[scout24]

Daaaaang... Traumatic at best for you! Hope he was ok...

 

[bykfixer]

Yes he was fine. My pop was tough. When he came to he was pissed the inside of the car got wet.
His shirt had a rip in it and his hip had a burned place the doctor said probably came from the lightning leaving him. He said he grabbed the door handle of the car and "bam!"

My mom and he would hear thunder and go around unplugging stuff. They used to say "never talk on the phone in a thunder storm" "aunt so n so was killed when lightning hit the wires". See, back then phones had cords and if lightning hit the wires outside you could get zapped pretty good. They also said never take a shower in a thunderstorm. Often times folks would ground phone cable, a tv antenna or cable tv to an outside spigot so bathing in a storm according to my parents could result in a shocking experience.

We'd ask "mom what is thunder from" and she'd say "it's the devil beating his wife". My dad would say "pfft, no it's her hitting him back" lol.

 

[vadimax]

Buy good insurance and wear a helmet……

Locals are worried mostly of crops destroyed. Damaged vehicle is kind of 5000€ to repair, obliterated fields — some 50000€ of work and investments lost.

 

[turbodog]

One afternoon when I was a little kid my dad got up from the supper table to go roll up the windows of the family car during a thunderstorm. Both my parents smoked cigarettes. A few minutes later he had not returned. My mom said for me to go see where my dad was.
"go check on your father". "yes mam".
"well did do see your father?" "yes mam he's outside laying on the ground smoking".
"why would he be laying down in a thunderstorm?" see says. "I don't know mom but he is and there's smoke coming from him"………
He'd been hit by lightning.

So we always unplugged the tv and all radios back then.

Have a guy I know, a weatherman, that got struck. Blew most of his clothes off. Apparently the electricity turns the water on the skin to steam, which generates a huge pressure wave. He woke mostly naked, eardrums blown out, and CNS so scrambled he could not walk. He had to crawl/drag himself to his vehicle. He has the Lichtenburg marks down his torso.

 

[bykfixer]

A few year back a car club I was in was building a super-duper Honda Prelude with parts donated by club members across the country. I had a real nice car cover I bought from a fellow in Oklahoma who said it had saved his car a few times in hail storms. I offered to donate it to the project and did.
The car was nearly completed and had just been painted with a special paint when a hail storm happened one afternoon. Because the paint was fresh the two guys building it did not want to put a cover over it. After the storm was over the body looked like a giant golf ball. So many dents it was hard to believe. The special parts were removed and sent back to the donors and the car ended up going to the junkyard.

Cover Craft makes a hail proof cover custom shaped to the vehicle. Probably nothing could protect against what Vadi showed though. Mine has been pelted with thumb sized hail a few times and the Cover Craft cover has kept it dent free. About $300 but worth it.

 

[scout24]

Glad Pops was ok! We had big boomers roll through last night, tons of rain. No sleep, the big pup hates thunder and wanders the house whimpering. (She's 152 lbs.) And so much for the 50 lbs of grass seed I put down yesterday. Oh well. I was actually thinking of this thread when I couldn't sleep.

 

[bykfixer]

152 pounds? Good gosh man……

Probably like your pop Scout, mine was cut from a different breed of cloth. That really tough kind. Grew up in the Great Depression. Fought in Korea and all that.

We dodged storms all day today. Big ole blob of red and yellow would be headed our way and disintigrate at about the town limits. So I suppose the dogs naps were not interupted with panic by thunder. I did enjoy the almost steady breeze all day though.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Check out this site: real-time lightning strike maps from crowdsourced lightning detectors located around the world.

 

[bykfixer]

They say lightning doesn't strike the same place twice, right?

Back in the late 80's while at a drive in movie a storm came up and was raising cain. Lightning hit the concession stand a few parking spots away from where I was. POW!! Holy crap that was close. I was driving. The passengers were freaking out. "Let's go" and all that. I said "pfft, lightning never hits the same pl POW!!" ……Uh, nuff said. We got out of that place fast. lol. Did it hit the exact same place a second time? Got me. But it sure was close enough for me.

They say lightning begins at the ground and moves up. One year Mrs Fixer and I were filming lightning at 30 frames per second. We were under a porch using and alluminum tripod to hold the camera still. The idea was to capture screens shots of lightning bolts. While checking the 'movie' frame by frame we kept noticing what looked like electricity on the screen. Turns out we were standing near lighning seeds. Next day when looking at the ground near where the tripod was were all these little raised ant hill looking spots with no ants. It was awesome but scarey too.

My old laptop does not speak to my new iPhone so it'll be a bit, but I have a photo saved of a lightning seed and the bolt it spawned I will post here shortly……brb

Never could get the iPhone 8 to talk to Windows 10 so I just took a photo of the computer screen.

The lightning seed pic.
Check out how freaking close static electricity was leaving the ground to where we were standing.
This is a pic of a 2018 computer screen.

The lightning bolt pic.
We got a few nice pix out of it. This is a pic of the computer screen I used back in about 2006. It is being viewed on the 2018 screen so since the two OS systems would not talk without an internet connection or aftermarket apps I just took a photo of a picture on a computer of a picture on a computer screen.

None of my photo storage units are hooked to the internet. No viruses, malware or any of that stuff to take out my photos.

As thunderstorm prep my photo storing devices stay unplugged from the wall until I go to use them year round. Ice storms, hurricanes and thunderstorms can result in power surges so I just keep some things in the house unplugged until I go to use them.

 

[raggie33]

i have no idea how im not dead i as said before go right out into the storms walk out and watch them. ive seen some crazy ones in florida and here in georgia.

 

[raggie33]

and lighting does hit the same Place twice it stuck the rain gutter above me twice in my teens

 

[vadimax]

Lightnings do strike one place multiple times if it collects enough potential. This is how lightning conductors work.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Let's say that lightning strikes a lightning rod on a tall building, and the strike produces a layer of oxidation on the metal rod that acts as an insulator. The dielectric strength of that oxide layer would be so tiny compared to the charge potential of a subsequent strike that there would be nothing to prevent it from happening again and again. So I see no reason why lightning would be prevented from striking twice in exactly the same spot.