11-12-2011, 07:32 PM
quote:
The biggest lightning storms I've ever seen regularly were in the New Mexico Rockies. Huge storms every afternoon in the summer. Much bigger than here. Another reason I haven't feared these smallish storms.
I've experienced those storms and the lightning is gobsmacking. Those storms are indeed much larger than here. On the other hand, I've not experienced the amount of lightning that we get here, or at least where I live. The storm over Kaloli Point in 2003/3004 only lasted 30 minutes or so but there were lightning strikes every 10 seconds or so. I wanted to leave my house because I was scared but was even more scared to get to my car because it meant going outside. Instead I decided to sit down in the the middle of my house because that would mean I'd have less of a chance of being struck.
My house was struck by lightning three times that night. The telephone line vaporized (the handsets survived vaporization) and the TV antenna was scorched. I had an amplifier on the antenna line that took the full brunt of the strike and I think saved most of my electronics.
It turned out that all my expensive electronic stuff survived but all the cheap stuff died. My radio alarm would only give the correct time between noon and 1pm every day. My TV screen was a green/orange color for months until it eventually recovered. My phone handsets were fried (literally) yet everything else survived.
Wish I took a picture of the phone line the day after. It was completely vaporized. The Verizon repair team (as it was back then) were astonished, they'd never seen anything like it. That phone line is what took out four palm trees because it was close to the fronds.
Since then I've lost another two palms due to lightning and think maybe I've pissed off the almighty in some way!
PS. The 2000 storm was a super-cell, so something very similar to those in the mid-west etc.
Tom
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