lightning is weird ...

Ron Beaufort

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Join Date
Jul 2002
Location
Charleston, SC
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this is sort of Off Topic - but since we consider the possibility of "lightning problems" quite often, I decided to post this on a slow day ...

here are just a couple of links about lightning that I ran across in the news lately ... frankly I wouldn't have believed either one without the pictures ...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/toilet-explodes-in-florida-home-after-lightning-strikes-septic-tank

https://www.foxnews.com/us/south-carolina-counselor-lightning-strike-video

be careful out there ...
.

lightning_strikes.PNG
 
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There was a lightning strike directly across the street from my hours about 20 years ago. It was so close there was no thunder. Just a very loud ZZZZTT and the house jumped.


Thunder is the reflection of sound of the strike off hundreds of trees and buildings if you are far enough away.


There was a small tree missing across the street after that.


However, my ex-wife did get nailed when she was opening a door to a metal pole barn and lightning struck a creek about 1/4 mile away.
 
Our house got hit almost 20 years ago. As lightning strikes go, we were pretty lucky. Fried a computer and burned some holes in the plaster in a bathroom presumably where the bolt went in and out. Never did see any signs of the strike outside. That was the weird part. 100% evidence of a bolt through interior walls but no sign outside ��

Lucky too that local fire dept had infrared cameras or they would have had to take apart the walls to look for fire inside.
 
Lightening struck a hollow tree in our front yard years ago. You couldn't have done more damage by filling it with dynamite. It exploded and turned it into about 20 large projectiles and a 1000 small ones. The large chunks were found over 200' away. We were all looking right at it when it happened.
 
I once watched lightening hit a power pole and blow up a pole-mounted transformer. I will never forget the blue/white colour of that explosion, and I'm pretty sure my ears are still ringing 15 years later. I was adequately impressed and amused.
 
Lightning generates a lot of business for us. I have seen some odd ones. One water tank got hit and zapped the pressure (level) transducer. This is very common. It also blew the door off of the control panel, melted the padlock and panel hasp, bent the door of the 24" x 36" enclosure so bad, that there was a 4 inch gap at the top when you tried to close it. It destroyed all the internal components including some terminal blocks.

I built a new panel for it and procured a replacement for the obsolete radio modem. When I went to install it, I was going to install a new sensor in the little pit next to the panel, and noticed there was no wire in the pipe. I asked my partner who was first on site, why he pulled the old cable out, cause I could have used it to pull in the new one. He said "I didn't" I looked again, and noticed the shield was still in the EMT, welded to the side of the conduit. The rest of the 2 conductor cable was vaporized and the sensor had a nice round nub where the cable exited it.

The meter supplying AC power to my box also got fried, and its base was also cratered so bad the power company had to replace both. There was even a chunk of concrete broken off at the foundation of the water tank where the panel posts were next to it.

I don't have a good pic that shows the whole panel, but these show some of it.

These are the easy ones...when the storm breaks stuff and doesn't leave smoke trails, then things randomly act stupid for weeks afterward...those lightning damages are not fun to figure out.

I didn't design or build this original panel, by the way, I just had to replace it and mine had wire labels...

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Cherokee South Tower Panel.png Cherokee South Tower.png
 
Quite a few years ago I was doing a start-up in Georgia on a cloudy misty day, but not particularly stormy and no thunder. Just after I had unplugged my laptop's serial port the pole transformer outside the building took a direct hit. It came in through the ground, fried an entire MCC, and smoked everything in my panel. When I landed, I landed running.

Another pay bonus for my guardian angel.
 
July 4th 2003 the pole mounted transformer feeding my house took a direct hit. I saw it and heard it. Took an hour for my eyes to get sorted out and my ears rang for two days. Blew the transformer into pieces all over the yard and fried a large quantity of electronics in the house.

Weird thing is it didn't affect anything with a compressor, A/C, fridge, freezer, etc.

That was a substantial insurance claim, glad I had replacement coverage!
 

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