a Taj MuttHall Dog Diary: Close Call on Lightning Strike

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Close Call on Lightning Strike

SUMMARY: I was spared!
Remember in yesterday's post, right in the middle, where I suddenly commented, "Oooh--just had some thunder and lightning! Boom!" It was a bright flash, the only flash I saw despite a little distant thunder, and the boom came almost simultaneously. I knew it was close. But didn't realize--

It struck a condo on the opposite side of the field from me and set it on fire! Story and news video here.

The arrow is pointing to what's probably the evergreen tree you can see briefly in the video.


Yikes.

Her dog escaped after the strike (hole in the wall, she said? Was that from the firefighters?) but was found soon after she arrived home. Another "Whew!"

7 comments:

  1. Holy moly, that is SCARY!! So close to you guys! Glad everyone is fine including dog and cat.

    Loved that weather poem, very catchy.

    We have been having very boring weather, all cloud all the time. Bleh. Sun's supposed to make an appearance tomorrow after what seems like an eternity.

    Hope you keep weathering the weather and Boostie keeps doing her newspaper thing. What a nifty trick.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh one more thing, maybe this is totally stating the obvious in which case kindly ignore it, but since you don't get lightning too often, thought I'd mention it just in case: Always a good idea to turn off and uplug the computer during lightning storms. A power surge can really mess up a computer in a serious way. Or something like that, not sure how it all works.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know I'm supposed to unplug everything, even the toaster and the phone, during a lightning storm. But, sheesh, what are the odds? (Um, I guess based on yesterday's strike, the odds are better than I thought for taking a strike.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, I'm surprised all three of you didn't jump when that hit so close! Katie would have been inconsolable for quite awhile after. Glad everyone, including the condo owner's dog, was fine!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, we jumped alright! Well, I didn't jump quite so much because I saw the lightning flash so I knew something was coming eventually. Dogs jumped up and barked and raced around looking for the guilty party.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Just make sure everything electronic is plugged into a surge protector. Then the protector takes the bullet and you're only out the protector.

    ReplyDelete
  7. A surge protector won't help much if at all if there's a direct lightning strike. Plus I'm not going to be plugging my toaster or telephone into surge protectors, for example.

    ReplyDelete