Whoa!!

[the fisherman]

Last night in Whitethorn we had the most violent thunderstorm we've had since I've lived here, unfortunatly my house took a direct hit. We haven't been able to figure out why, but the strike traveled to my breaker box, fried most of the wiring and started a small fire, I'm very lucky I was home. The storm had been going on for a while, with lots of heavy wind and unreal hail storms. When we got hit, I was in my living room, the lightning was like nothing I've ever seen here before, it was truly blinding. At the same time I saw the lightning the house went dark, it seemed a long time before the thunder, but what thunder it was. The whole thing was pretty cool except for the breakerbox part. I have backup power,which it looks like we'll be running on for a few days. We haven't had much of a winter so far, but in the last few days it's been one storm after the next. No big deal,just country livin". Next big storm due tonight, I wonder what's next?

 

[snow hunter]

Fish,

Sorry to hear about your dilema.I am glad you and your place our all right and not fried fish and chips.
Buckle down the hatches and hunker down for the storm tonight. I hope that is the last of your fireworks.

 

[chnlisle]

Dude its just one thing after another. I worry about you.

 

[dsrtrat]

Lightning

The reason your panel was fried was that it was the most likely the shortest path to ground. Lightning usually seeks a direct path and the panel is grounded with a ground rod or water pipe (or both in some cases).
Dsrtrat

 

[the fisherman]

No More Problems

I don't care about the breaker box, I just want to keep the generator running long enough so I can see the Daytona 500, if I can just get away with that I'll be happy. Were used to power outages here so it's no big deal. I dug up the ground rod, to check the connection, it's intact, and so is everything else except the box. I guess the odds of this happening again are pretty slim, I hope. I didn't mention that when we took the hit it felt like my hair was standing straight up, you could feel the energy pass right through you, it was kind of a weird feeling. The real mystery to me is why the box fried, but the transfer panel to the gen. set was unaffected.

 

[chnlisle]

Apparently its not only the sea thats selective.

 

[Marc]

Batten down the hatch's

Jon

Glad you survived that direct hit. Was looking at an isobar chart this morning and it looks like the next front could be a whopper. Stay dry.