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Holy crap-ola!

RedlegRedleg Member Posts: 417 ✭✭✭
edited October 2001 in General Discussion
I was just walking between my car and the front door of my office when a lightning bolt struck about 25-30 yards away. What they tell you was true...the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you can hear the snap-crackle-pop of electricity then the boom. What they don't tell you is there is now way you can react in time to drop to the ground, etc...All in all a very neat way to start the day!Brian
Crush your enemies, drive their horses before you, hear the lamentation of their women.--Genghis Khan
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Comments

  • He DogHe Dog Member Posts: 51,593 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I think there is an aphorism to cover that: Something like-Any lightening bolt you survive is a good one? Must be nice to be in a place where it rains sometimes.He Dog in the New Mexico Desert.
    Founding Father:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets
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  • nunnnunn Forums Admins, Member, Moderator Posts: 36,078 ******
    edited November -1
    One night we were driving along a two lane blacktop state highway in a storm. Lightning struck a power pole just as we came by it. Sounded like a bomb and the flash was unbelievably bright. Being in a car, we did not feel any effects of the residual static electricity. That is as close as I want to be.
    Certified SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of the General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the premier gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net Jesus is Lord!
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  • badboybobbadboybob Member Posts: 1,658 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I remember one night years ago flying between P'cola and Beevile, TX at 40,000 feet. There was a humongeous line of thunderstorms just North of me and the lightening was amazing. I watched countless times as a bolt of lightening started from one cloud, then continued to another, and another for dozens of miles. It was a great display of nature's fireworks and I was grateful to see it, and thankful I wasn't flying in that squall line.
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  • soopsoop Member Posts: 4,633
    edited November -1
    Hey RedlegGood to be alive!! isn`t it? Go home and hug your wife,your kids,and your guns too. Your a lucky man today,you walked away.
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  • Gene B.Gene B. Member Posts: 892 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Redleg, is it true that if lightning hits the ground it turns in into glass?
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  • landislandis Member Posts: 230 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    By profession, I am a pilot. For the last 18 years I have been making a living flying airplanes and now airliners, (and not much of one at that for the first 12). Over that time I have been hit (my aircraft) five times. I remember every one. Most pilots I know have been 'hit' two or three times. I guess I am a lightning rod. (it makes my first officers very nervous when I tell them that). My wife says that explains a lot. I don't exactly know what she means by that...
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  • Andrew AdamsAndrew Adams Member Posts: 227 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Gene,When lightning hits sand it does produce a very cloudy black glass like structure, usually in the shape of a pipe. I have two of them found while digging in my "sandbox" when I was growing up.My "sandbox" was a hill 40 or 50 feet high and several hundred feet long that was entirely comprised of high grade sand that was apparently deposited there by a glacier. It sat on the back forty of the property, and I got to play in the hole in one face of it that had been dug out to get sand for the mortar that went into the two houses on the property. While I was digging and playing there, I found two of these glass columns, and I have kept them, although right now they are in a box somewhere, and I wouldn't begin to know where to go look for them.Just regular dirt would not become glass when superheated, the dirt would have to be mostly sand.
    When you want to dial long distance...AT&T, .223, or Jeremiah 33.3?Member:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets
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  • LowriderLowrider Member Posts: 6,587
    edited November -1
    We don't have real *-kickin' electrical storms in Washington. I had just arrived at Fort Monmouth, N.J. in August of 1968 when it cut loose one night with a real classic East Coast lightning storm. I stood out on the second-floor porch of my barracks (the old WWII type of wooden two-story barracks) watching the show. The lightning got closer and closer until it was so close I could hear it sizzle. I was really enjoying myself when it struck the second-floor porch of the barracks right next door. About 50 feet away. Lumber went flying everywhere and the barracks porch caught fire.I watched the rest of the lightning show from under the bed.
    Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.
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  • IconoclastIconoclast Member Posts: 10,515 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    dano - was that 'nano' seconds or 'dano' seconds? I was sitting in the living room of my grandparents' farm house one time and watched a ball of lighting trace a track corresponding to the pipes or wires (forget which now) across the floor following a strike on the house. Fortunately it didn't start a fire, but it left a charred line across the carpet. The adults were somewhat unhappy as I recall, but as a child (I was maybe 8) I thought it rather neat in my naive youth. Redleg, am glad you're here, unsinged, to tell us the story.
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