Lightning strike. Featured

When did this happen?

Or where?

you have never seen brickwork blown apart then ? .....

I had a direct strike on a phone line that blew sockets out of the wall, required a full rewire or insurance wouldn't pay, took out modem, serial parallel card, printer, TV, and record deck. And burnt a few holes in a carpet.

Cooker was OK tho

Well although it may have fried the aerial, its likely that it struck through the roof and may well have struck more than one house. Lightning is not tidy, its a bit like a teenager and has bits all over the place. Having been near to two strikes in my life, it struck the roof of a factory, and although it was plastered in lightning conductors, all the wiring was ruined and all the computers and devices in the factory that were electrically driven suffered some damage as well. In a field near a pylon it struck the pylon, but it also struck the ground all around it leaving the grass sizzling for some seconds afterwards. I and the dog both layed down as soon as I felt the tell tale prickling of a high voltage, but the hot blast and the noise, no wonder I have tinnitus.

I heard on the radio the other day that scientists are still not sure what it is that triggers the sudden breakdown and a discharge. Fingers are pointing at high energy cosmic rays from deep space apparently, which ionise the air just enough to allow the discharge. Brian

I was reading about why there are so many more lightning deaths in some countries than others. One reason is because of plumbing. The lightning finds the easiest route to earth, which is through the plumbing and electrics, rather than the people. :)

That's entirely possible. There's no shortage of cosmic rays.

Fascinating.

I doubt if a strike to a tv aerial would travel outside the preises struck. More likely an overhead line was struck and got into other houses that way.

I know someone that was thrown across the room and the kitchen sink blown off the wall, when a nearby ground strike travelled into the house via the pipes!

The house diagonally opposite to my Mums was hit with lightening and it blew the cast iron fireplace out of the hearth and onto the carpet, which then started to catch fire. I can remember seeing the fire engine turn up and the firemen throwing the fireplace out of the sash window and onto the pavement (as it must have still been very hot).

Powerful stuff.

Cheers, T i m

Aren't cows regularly killed by strikes ? The distance between front and rear legs being enough to create a fatal potential difference ?

Gives me an idea for a nice cottage industry, selling rubber boots for cows.

Three per cow? or four?

Four - then you have redundancy in case one becomes damaged or lost. You know what it's like walking in mud, getting your wellies stuck and walking out of one :)

You got lucky.

Lightning kills cows because when they _aren't_ hit there can be significant voltage between the front and back legs.

Andy

You mean like that Dobbin that pegged it at Newmarket a few years back because he walked across a buried but leaky HT cable?

South AFrica, Brazil, India , ??

Toast nicely done, without using any power ?

At the poles. The earths magnetic fields keep (?most of) them away from the rest of us.