Lightening got me.....

[Dennis Peacock]

So I've been off the air since early Friday morning.

Early morning storm got my cabel modem, router, firewall, network cable and network adapter card. My PC survived okay....but now I'm waiting on the cable company to come and replace their busted hardware on Monday sometime.

Now...I've gotta get off here as ANOTHER storm is blowing in!!!!!

Dennis - talking with phone wire strung everywhere, modem sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor and talking via slow dialup.

[Ken Garlock]

Dennis, maybe you should call your insurance man.

You are lucky that you didn't have more damage than what you have. Lightening is one of several things in nature that does what it wants when it wants, all you can do is stand back and hope. It sounds like now is the time to get a new PC and install the old one as a firewall.

BTW, I read the other day where the longest lightening bolt on record is 120 miles long, and it happened over Dallas and Fort Worth. Now that is a lot of volts

[Karl Laustrup]

Just curious Dennis, did you have a surge protector in line?

I've always had one [an APC battery back-up type] but usually power down when I know there is a storm brewing. Those have been far and few between this year.

Karl

[Pat Monahan]

Dennis
If it makes you feel any better, a few years ago lightning hit too close for comfort. I was in the kitchen and felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up just before a simultaneous flash and boom. The bolt must have forked since one neighbour said it hit a fence and another neighbour said it hit the maple tree in the front yard. It blew bark off the tree into the middle of the road, but no other damage to the tree. Sadly, the phone lines and cable lines run underground near the tree. Yeah, you guessed it. It fried one (less than 2 year old ) TV. The surge travelled down the street through the underground cables and took out a modem next door and a TV two doors down from there. The next day I picked up a surge protected power bar designed for lightning as well as line surges, with connections for phone and cable. Now if I see a bad one coming I unplug the electronic goodies.
Pat

[John Hart]

Here's some fun facts from the national weather service. This is just the US but they have other facts about the world too. (Like Africa gets the most)



Lightning Facts for the United States:

Lightning Capital of the United States: Florida. More information on why can be found here, and a table listing state by state (casualties/damage) can be found here.

In an average year, over 22 million cloud to ground lightning flashes hit the contiguous United States and surrounding coastal waters (R. Holle/NSSL, personal communication).

Across the United States, most lightning casualties occur between 12 noon and 4 pm local time. (Curran et al 1997)

When people are mortally wounded by a lightning flash, 91% of the time it is only 1 person that is killed. (Curran et al 1997). On a related topic, most of the time, when lightning hits the ground and causes casualties to people, usually only 1 person is affected. (Holle et al 1996)

STORM DATA is estimated to under report lightning deaths by at least 28%, and injuries requiring hospitalization by at least 42%. (Lopez et al, 1993)

It is estimated 307,000 lightning claims are filed per year across the United States. It is also estimated lightning causes over $330,000,000 a year across the United States (1996 Dollars) Holle et al 1996.

In a study by Holle et al 1996. , it was found that there was 367 more times more damage than what was reported in STORM DATA (Damage was 27 million dollars in STORM DATA, while it is estimated to be more like 330 million).

National lightning detection network data in recent years was used to estimate that...

• One lightning casualty occurred for every 86,000 flashes in the United States,

• One death occurred for every 345,000 flashes,

• One injury occurred for every 114,000 flashes,

Overall, a rate of 7.7 casualties per million people per 100 million flashes was found for the entire
United States. (Curran 1997)
Your chances of being struck by lightning in the United States is 1 in 600,000 (NOAA)

[Dennis Peacock]

Just curious Dennis, did you have a surge protector in line?

I've always had one [an APC battery back-up type] but usually power down when I know there is a storm brewing. Those have been far and few between this year.

Karl

Karl,

I have surge protectors out the ying-yang, UPS protection, various lightening protectors and such all in use....but lightening will be lightening....it goes whereever it wants to go. Hope to be back online tonight.

[Karl Laustrup]

Thanks Dennis. Where I was only slightly worried, I'm now very worried when, or maybe I should say IF, we ever get another storm. 14 days since the last rain. None on the horizon until maybe Thursday. Watched the storms just dissapate as they crossed the Mississippi last night and this morning.

WE ARE DRY!!!

Karl

[Fred Voorhees]

Lightening threw out our power here in Ringoes,NJ for a spell during Sundays NASCAR race and when it came back on, I at first thought that my new digital TV in the bar room was fried. Man that was a close call! Turns out that the blackout sent the tv into a fit and reset it to other parameters and I had to fiddle with it just to get a picture back and then it didn't have any audio. Didn't find that until an hour or so later when I just happened to hit the right combination of buttons on the remote.

[Dennis Peacock]

Thanks Dennis. Where I was only slightly worried, I'm now very worried when, or maybe I should say IF, we ever get another storm. 14 days since the last rain. None on the horizon until maybe Thursday. Watched the storms just dissapate as they crossed the Mississippi last night and this morning.

WE ARE DRY!!!

Karl

Karl,

I awoke this morning to the sound of THUNDER....AGAIN!!!!!! We have had storms every single day since last Thursday. Each one with lightening and rain. I just got back online last night and the new cablemodem is working great. I guess I'll have to "dis-com-bubberate" the whole setup before I leave for work in case it runs in the cable line again. Good thing my shop hasn't been hit......knock on wood!!!!!

I done some electrical work in my "electrician" days on a sound studio. They had lightening arrestors and surge protectors installed on their power panel. This setup "at cost" was $20K and it worked well for about 3 years....and then.... a direct hit to the building zapped the studio AND each arrestor and surge protector. We talked with an electrical engineer and they said that those "things" only _help_ and not prevent. Lightening will travel and do funny things. I've even experienced it first hand across the days of my life so far.

The freakiest instance was when I was about 10 years old and was at my grandmothers....lightening hit the phone line across the street, ran in her house, blew up the phone, fried all the wiring and blew parts off of the wooden desk sitting up against the phone box at the bottom of the wall. That was so wild that I can still see it today in my minds eye.