Unfamiliar Weather 2015

[beejee]

Thank you Mr. Tom, we're indebted to you as usual. What a night!! Rest well my friend.

[PunaMauka2]

Found the source of yesterday's nearest lightning blast when I noticed a large piece of tree bark sticking up from the yard, which led me to spot the hole blown out of the mossy turf at the base of a hapu'u. ...which I then traced back to one of the giant Sugi trees in the yard where I found more channels blasted through the turf. Small chunks of sod were blown a fair ways away. The hole blasted at the base of the hapu'u just 5 feet from the front porch. We had been standing about 40 or 50 feet away in the carport at the time. No wonder it felt like a nearby explosion.

[knieft]

PM2: The hole blasted at the base of the hapu'u just 5 feet from the front porch.

Years ago, we lost 10 day old $6,000 forklift/solar batteries to lighting. Lessor years ago an Outback FX inverter was fried, or at least the main circuit board--easily replaced. I now disconnect everything during lightning storms.

Way back, a 20 foot longon tree about 100 feet from our house (somehow growing in blue rock) was split down the middle and felled, still growing all cockywoobly these days and impossible to tend and I guess scared to fruit.

Nothing this time around, knock on wood, but lightning is no friend of mine. OTOH a lightning survivor told me some five or six years ago that I had a wonderful aura, so I have _that_ going for me.

Interestingly, when the batteries popped years ago, the solar guy on Oahu (the one everyone checks with to find out everything solar, can't remember his name) said he has heard all sorts of weird tales about lightning and blue rock. I doubt the interaction between lightning and blue rock has ever been studied rigorously.

Which reminds me of lightning rods. We have been advised by several long timers that they should be avoided--the theory being that they will attract lightning and blue rock "grounded" rods would not be good.

I have no idea how grounded such ideas are, but I don't hear about anyone locally having installed lightning rods, dead white man Benjamin Franklin notwithstanding...

Cheers,
Kirt

[TomK]

Last night as seen from the CFHT's Cloudcam:

http://goo.gl/lzYrL3

[PunaMauka2]

Interesting stories, knieft, thanks. Serious bummers about losing those very expensive, brand spankin new batteries.

After that first blast we retreated to the back of the carport where it was driest and waited out the series of other very close strikes. 500 or so years ago I would have concluded that the wrath of the gods was upon us. The lightning traveled about 25 feet from the base of the Sugi tree (living lightning rod). The hail sounded like sheets of small pebbles on the iron roofing. I left the 2 foot length of bark/wood sticking from the ground. I think that may have been the heaviest downpour I have ever seen.

[knieft]

Scary stuff!

[beejee]

Knieft: Thats a real bummer about your batteries, were they under any sort of warranty? You peaked my interest regarding lightning and blue rock...care to share some more details. I tried a couple searches using Google but didn't really find anything yet.

[TomK]

Thank you Kirt and PM2. I used to love thunderstorms, not so much these days. I tend to get a little anxious because of this:

http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=13501&whichpage=3

"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."

A year later there was another tremendous storm over Kaloli Pt. Power was out and my lower lanai was flooding, the rain was that heavy. I was trying to asses how bad things were with a flashlight and a hand on the screen door. Next moment there was a blinding flash in front of me and my hand was thrown back from the screen door. The severe tingling in my hand and wrist lasted for several hours afterwards.

Now, nearby thunderstorms just make me nervous.

[PunaMauka2]

!!!

That Kaloli Point episode... nuts!

[knieft]

bee jee: Thats a real bummer about your batteries, were they under any sort of warranty? You peaked my interest regarding lightning and blue rock...care to share some more details. I tried a couple searches using Google but didn't really find anything yet.

Closest repair center was on Honolulu. Shipping both batteries roundtrip would have been costly (over 1000lbs each) and it wasn't clear they could effectively be repaired anyway. They ended up shipping replacements at cost from Pennsylvania. Years ago. Still going strong.

Lightning and blue rock...

Yeah, not much info at all out there--too esoteric, I guess. How many places have the blue rock underpinning we have here? And my understanding is that lightning was less common than it occurs in recent years. I wonder if even the resort hotels have lightning rods.

I hope someone can post something more about the issue even if anecdotal...I'm interested too.

Cheers,Kirt