Thunderstorms

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As far as I know surge protectors tend to be measured in thousand joules dissipated. A direct strike could be in the region of a billion to 10 billion joules.

The wires in your house would vaporise at that point.

Direct strikes to lines are so rare it's almost not worth thinking about. Regardless I unplug anything sensitive/expensive.
 
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The in-laws neighbours got a bad going when my wife was younger. Blew all the sockets in the house, burnt out the TV etc. Since then she's always plugging everything out on me. Maybe she's right to though!
 
To me its like backing up. Too few people bother until the worst happens then they wish they had :D.

As said its a minute chance but it's still a chance.

I knew someone a while ago who was hit by lightning (well the lightning hit a car close enough to jump) she's got scars that follow her veins on some parts of her body. It's actually quite pretty ignoring the horrible way to get them.

Edit: quick read up suggests the scars are of electrical discharge branches not her veins. Litchenberg effect.
 
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Brian18741 said:
The in-laws neighbours got a bad going when my wife was younger. Blew all the sockets in the house, burnt out the TV etc. Since then she's always plugging everything out on me. Maybe she's right to though!
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About thirty years ago one of our neighbours houses got "Struck"

Here's how it happened......!

The Bolt hit a tree about 15 yards from the house.

This would have been fine but for the fact hat the telephone wire passed through the trees foliage!

Instead of going to ground the bolt travelled along the telephone wire (My friend was actually underneath all this when it happened! (Imagine the science museum "Million volt discharge" happening 10 ft above your head! with absolutely no warning :eek: :eek:))

From there it jumped to the iron guttering and ran all around the house! (Blowing it off as it went!)

It got into the internal plumbing and ripped the pipes out of the walls! (I imagine that this was a magnetostrction thing, a lighting bolt might well have a million amps or more! :eek: )

It also got into the wiring, totally destroyed it, and blew the fusebox across the kitchen!

Fortunately the house didn't actually catch fire but it smelt very burned afterwards!:eek:

They were actually very lucky nobody got killed!

You do not want to get struck by lightning!

(Of course, the really annoying thing was that I had a first gen (And therefore very expensive) cordless phone at the time and the fact that the bolt hit the phone line meant that my phone 6 doors down got destroyed! :mad: :D )
 
Mynight said:
To me its like backing up. Too few people bother until the worst happens then they wish they had :D.

As said its a minute chance but it's still a chance.

I knew someone a while ago who was hit by lightning (well the lightning hit a car close enough to jump) she's got scars that follow her veins on some parts of her body. It's actually quite pretty ignoring the horrible way to get them.

Edit: quick read up suggests the scars are of electrical discharge branches not her veins. Litchenberg effect.
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Wow, that actually looks really cool! I know people who would pay good money for that kind of scarification! Probably a bit too extreme of a body mod for most though! haha

From google.

winston-kemp-struck-by-lightning.jpg


Orionaut said:
About thirty years ago one of our neighbours houses got "Struck"

Here's how it happened......!

The Bolt hit a tree about 15 yards from the house.

This would have been fine but for the fact hat the telephone wire passed through the trees foliage!

Instead of going to ground the bolt travelled along the telephone wire (My friend was actually underneath all this when it happened! (Imagine the science museum "Million volt discharge" happening 10 ft above your head! with absolutely no warning :eek: :eek:))

From there it jumped to the iron guttering and ran all around the house! (Blowing it off as it went!)

It got into the internal plumbing and ripped the pipes out of the walls! (I imagine that this was a magnetostrction thing, a lighting bolt might well have a million amps or more! :eek: )

It also got into the wiring, totally destroyed it, and blew the fusebox across the kitchen!

Fortunately the house didn't actually catch fire but it smelt very burned afterwards!:eek:

They were actually very lucky nobody got killed!

You do not want to get struck by lightning!

(Of course, the really annoying thing was that I had a first gen (And therefore very expensive) cordless phone at the time and the fact that the bolt hit the phone line meant that my phone 6 doors down got destroyed! :mad: :D )
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Wow serious business. Imagine standing there watching that happen!
 
Pretty big storm over head at catterick at the moment, one strike must have been seriously close, enough to light up the room pretty well and sounded like a 155mm being fired next door! ******* LOUD!!!
 
we've had about 5 thunderstorms in the last few hours here in Castleford, the rain as been Monsoon level, most of the town is flooded, pretty dire here at the minute and looking at www.raintoday.co.uk its going to be like this for a while.

:EDIT: another one rolling in right now
 
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Ahleckz said:
Three hours of sheet lightning tonight in Hanoi! Was very cool being on a rooftop bar watching it. Few loud bangs of Thunder but mostly a continuous low Rumble. Much better than anything in the UK!
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We're mostly unwelcome in this thread :p We have daily thunderstorms and downpours with 200mm+ of rain at times, with hours of thunder and lightening. Watching the clouds gather now for today's effort.

Things break and fall over, I get very wet, people get on with things. Bring on the next proper typhoon, the last one was a bit rubbish.

Edit/ We did have 10cm of rain in 20 minutes yesterday, that was pretty epic. I was out with an umbrella, which I swear somehow actually made me wetter than if I'd gone without. Could be worse, some places up north were almost 400mm of rain, not a typhoon or anything, just a summer storm. I've given up on wearing shoes.
 
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Feef said:
We're mostly unwelcome in this thread :p We have daily thunderstorms and downpours with 200mm+ of rain at times, with hours of thunder and lightening. Watching the clouds gather now for today's effort.

Things break and fall over, I get very wet, people get on with things. Bring on the next proper typhoon, the last one was a bit rubbish.

Edit/ We did have 10cm of rain in 20 minutes yesterday, that was pretty epic. I was out with an umbrella, which I swear somehow actually made me wetter than if I'd gone without. Could be worse, some places up north were almost 400mm of rain, not a typhoon or anything, just a summer storm. I've given up on wearing shoes.
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Should move to the sunshine City Taichung then ;)
 
Chucking it down here, thundering too :)


1 clap of thunder lasted about 10 seconds - thought it was an explosion :eek:
 
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