Lightning Struck House Twice While Eating Supper. DESTROYED STOVE

[Winger Ed.]

I figure I've had my warning shot, but that's a story for another thread.

I used to know a golf player than did some big tournaments.
He'd met & played against Lee Travino a couple times.
Mr. Travino had been hit by lightening on a course one time.
After that, no matter how much money was involved in a game, when it started clouding up---- he was GONE!

[skrapyard628]

Yeah, its definitely a moment where youre not sure if you should check for damage or change your shorts first after a close lightning strike.

About 2 years ago I had lightning hit the ~40ft pine tree in my front yard. The tree was maybe 15ft away from the bay windows in my living room. The strike splintered/charred the top 5ft of the tree and blew all the bark off of it about 20ft down the trunk.

Scared the living bejeezus out of me since I was standing in the kitchen and could see little embers and bits of bark floating down into the yard through the bay window.

Luckily I was still inside packing my lunch pail. If I had been ready for work 5 minutes earlier I would have been outside in the driveway when it struck.

[jonp]

The lightning rods were on the house when we bought it and are quite old. The house is shaped like a T. The 4 rods on the front part are grounded separately from the 3 on the back and the ground wire is a big, aluminum twisted type thing. I had the electric line moved last year to a different pole and put underground to the outside of the house where I installed 200 Amp service. That box was grounded by the electrician. The feed goes into the house for a 100 Amp sub box (old main box) to run the house. I'm going to run the outside line to a garage in the future. The inside box was not grounded when we moved in for some reason. After I pulled a bunch of the old metal 2 strand out of the walls and replaced with Romex I grounded the box myself by running a large copper wire of appropriate size down and out the house and drove an 8ft copper rod into the ground and attached it up. I looked online for the proper sized copper wire and length rod for the soil we had so it's good but I wasn't happy so I drove a second 8 ft rod several feet away and attached that to the first. Should be good I think. 2 Boxes and 3 grounds along with 2 seperate grounds for the lightning rods.

I didn't mention that the GFS outlet that tripped saving the propane water heater, washing machine and overhead light is on the other side of a wall from the ground wire running down the outside from the lightning rod. I think that maybe enough of a charge came down that line that it tripped the GFS which may explain why the breaker in the box never tripped. Maybe...

I think that 2 direct hits with no damage other than mentioned which was my fault for not grounding the stove shows it works not bad I think.
Knock on wood.

[Texas by God]

We’re on the end of the line, out in the country. First strike house new and all new appliances taken out. All in warranty fixed. Second strike took out phone,well, computer etc. electric co. Said they had a lightning protector to install under meter base for $5.00 per month. That has paid off twice since installation. Now there not supporting that any more said you cant stop lightning. It goes where it wants to go, praying we don’t get hit again.

That is the hard truth. Lightning is like a tornado. It's going to go where it wants to go and nothing can stop it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[MaryB]

With 2 towers that are above roof line and a LOT of aluminum antennas in the air(ham radio) I invested in serious lightning protection, 8 rods spaces twice the length apart(what NEC recommends) all bonded together with #2 copper. I have had 2 hits since then and no house damage but I DO unplug everything during a storm. Antenna entrance panel is loaded with lightning surge suppression for each antenna line coming in, main power has 2 lightning protectors on it(1 inside, 1 outside)...

As an electronics tech I have seen way to much lightning damage that could have been prevented. Back when everyone used a phone modem on computers the phone line was a favorite entry point for lightning and it could cause damage all over the house!

[jonp]

Mary, did you use the 5ft rods for this as allowed for communications equipment?

[Land Owner]

I came so close to getting struck by lightning years ago that I could hear the loud snap and smell the ozone, so I have complete respect for it; I figure I've had my warning shot, but that's a story for another thread.

Same here...lightning "lit up" a pine tree not 75 FEET from where I was standing as if in a Van de Graff machine with every hair on my body at attention. Perhaps you SHOULD start that other thread...maybe call it NEAR MISS LIGHTNING STRIKES.

[Land Owner]

I had always wanted to play one of the PGA courses where my brother lives - The Reserve, in Pt. St. Lucie, FL. He introduced me to one of his Florida Power and Light buddies who was on medical leave that had a membership and played there. The green's fee was steep, but the course was immaculate - and I DO NOT PLAY GOLF, but wanted to that one day on that particular course.

On the fourth tee I learned that the FPL guy was recovering from a lightning strike on THAT course that KILLED his golfing buddy and partially paralyzed him. At the first HINT of lightning within 20 miles, we were GONE. I got in three holes of golf on that course...

[6bg6ga]

Several things to keep in mind

1. Lightning doesn't follow any rules
2. Surge suppressors don't do squat.
3. Lightning damage can occur all over the house or randomly take out what it chooses.
4. Nothing is a guarantee against damage.
5. Lightning can follow the phone cable
6. Lightning can come in thru a coax even if grounded at times.
7. Lightning can come thru your power line.

Feel free to add

[yeahbub]

Some thirty years ago, My GF and I got the horses together and were going to go riding when a summer rain came through. We waited in the barn for the rain to end and saw a lightning strike about a half mile away that had two big flashes and a lingering third with a big crack-and-boom. We hadn't seen anything quite like that before and rode in that direction. We found where it struck in someone's front yard. A black locust tree that was previously 10-12" in diameter and some 30" feet high had been blown all to flinders and the debris was all over the yard, none of it bigger than an ax handle. The trunk looked like the frazzled blown-up end of a cartoon cigar stub at the ground. Ordinarily, lightning travels down the outside of the tree and leaves a burn track, sometimes spiraling around the tree, which is interesting to see. I had read that, given the amount of energy released, if the current travels through the wood internally, the resulting steam explosion will blow the tree apart. This one sure did.

[MaryB]

Mary, did you use the 5ft rods for this as allowed for communications equipment?

8 footers, longer the rod the more effective it is. This is one tower, second is at the west end of my house, plus there is a 43' tall vertical out in the yard that I forgot about that ground rod in the system LOL

[Handloader109]

My house in MS was hit a couple of decades ago. It hit second story, I had Christmas lights strung around the second story and the porch (3 sides of house). Hit front up high, blew off a 3 ft section of a 2x6 rafter (went in through the staple holding the light cable. Followed the cable of lights to the rear of the house just disintegrating the wire, down to where it crossed over the telephone line, near ground level, jumped that 3 ft gap and went into the house through the telephone line. Killed all my phones, Modem in computer and I don't think anything else.

[Mal Paso]

Lightning always hits the same spots year after year. If you have lightning rods it's likely you need them. Moving the conduction point to above your house will not attract lightning. Your talking 40 feet compared to thousands of feet the lightning traveled to get there. Lightning rods work because there is little time to heat the wire. You can put hundreds of amps down relatively small wire for fractions of a second. Put hundreds of amps through the resistance of your house you get damage.

There are over 200 kinds of lightning so there's no perfect protection. The 3 wire air gap suppressors are like $30 and fit in your main panel are good for the price. Beyond that the prices get higher for less return.

[Land Owner]

Earth to cloud lightning (and vice versa) is caused by the potential energy difference between clouds and the ground and the immense release of charged electrons along a pathway from one to the other.

Consider kite string that gets charged when wet and flown in an approaching storm.

In 1752, during a thunderstorm in Pennsylvania the most famous kite in history flew with sparks jumping from a key tied to the bottom of damp kite string to an insulating silk ribbon tied to the knuckles of [Benjamin] Franklin's hand. Franklin's grounded body provided a conducting path for the electrical currents responding to the strong electric field buildup in the storm clouds.

A golfer walking a fairway is a "spike" in that location (narrowing of distance) that accentuates and concentrates the flow of electrons through him!

Raising the house lightning rod DOES INCREASE the potential for lightning to strike in that location because it shortens the path of the charged particles.

[Mal Paso]

Raising the house lightning rod DOES INCREASE the potential for lightning to strike in that location because it shortens the path of the charged particles.

By 40 feet or so. Not enough to borrow lightning from elsewhere. The houses I've seen here with lightning rods have already been hit. I have actual experience with lightning damage, prevention and repair.

Also built a 250,000 volt Tesla Coil and played with "lightning".

If you are near a spot that lightning is going to hit your 6 feet of height might make you a better target by that 6 feet ONLY. No Magic!

[AlaskaMike]

There's so much misinformation and myths regarding lightning it's just insane. Believe it or not, lightning behavior is well established and hasn't changed in many thousands of years. It's even addressed in a very clear manner in the NEC.

The thing that I love hearing the most is when people unplug stuff thinking that will protect them from lightning strike damage. Keep in mind that a lightning strike can be millions of volts and an equal number of amps, and it just crossed several miles of air gap insulation to get to ground. Unplugging your favorite appliance is literally meaningless when it comes to a direct lightning hit.

There are a couple of key areas to dealing with lightning:

1. Give it many low-resistance paths to ground, the more the better
2. All ground systems must be electrically bonded to the AC service panel ground

The NEC is pretty much the bible when it comes to grounding safety, and there's certainly more to it than the above two items. However those two things in my experience seem to be what people have the most trouble understanding.

The commercial radio towers at my company virtually always have three layers of grounding; the tower base, at the outside of the coax entry point to the building, and the inside of the entry point. All of these are bonded together at a single bus bar that also ties them to the AC service ground. These towers have commercial and public safety repeater antennas, point to point microwave antennas, and cell site sector antennas, and disconnecting any of that equipment during a lightning storm is simply not an option.

Many folks at this point will roll their eyes and say, "yeah, but I don't have the kind of money a big company has to provide that level of grounding." Strictly speaking, those folks are correct. However, it costs way less than you might think to drive a few extra ground rods and bond them all to your AC panel using #6 wire.

Lastly, make sure you examine *anything* that comes into your house in the form of a wire or cable. This includes cable TV and old style telephone, satellite TV and regular TV antennas. These are all items that need to have grounding devices installed which *must* be bonded to the AC panel according to the NEC. If they're not, you need to call your service provider and jerk their chain to make them come out and fix it.

Bottom line is, lightning *will* find a path to ground. You can either let it find that path randomly through your house and favorite appliances, or you can provide a much quicker path to ground before it even gets inside your house.

[Smoke4320]

we built a new shop in 2003.. All new equipment, phones, alarm system, cameras the works
for 4 years we would get hit nearly every lightning storm. we canceled a contract with the alarm system company after having to buy multiple boards.. Pulled out all their equipment and have not been hit since. No one has been able to tell me what was causing the strikes

[Finster101]

My pole barn got hit about three weeks ago. It followed the electrical service and the ethernet cable into the house. I'm at a little over 4K in replacement of items now. Cable modem, router, 2 Tivo boxes, the wife's laptop and the salt generator for the pool.

[dave roelle]

While sitting in my deer blind near Sonora Tx, i witnessed a lightening strike about 150 yards away, the bolt hit a 12 inch cedar tree instantly reducing it to smoldering toothpick sized splinters-----------the resulting thunder clap shook the ground-----it was IMPRESSIVE

[David2011]

When I was in high school our orchestra was to perform at the HemisFair in San Antonio. The buses were parked at the base of the big Tower of the Americas. It was around 10:00 AM and as dark as 30 minutes after sunset when I stepped off the bus just as lightning hit the tower. The intense flash and massive boom were simultaneous. Just about ran over my friends as I reversed course.

While working at a computer shop in the Houston area we prepared for lightning repairs every time thunder storms passed through. That was back in the days of dialup, AOL and CompuServe. I had a phone jack mounted on my computer desk at home and kept in unplugged unless I was using the dialup service. Almost all computer damage at that time came in through the phone line and modem. I don't think I ever saw a blown power supply and very few damaged main boards. I have seen video cards damaged from lightning through the modem, though. One office had a coax cabled network and lightning got something in all five of their computers through the coax.

The Houston area had a bad lightning storm 3-4 months ago and about 100,000 homes lost power including ours, some for days. We were sitting in powered recliners and had to crawl out of them with the footrests still raised.