Lightning Strikes!

[gusg]

We had a thunderstorm go through the other day and the very large oak tree out in front of my neighbor's house was struck. The tree is about 300 feet from my house. The tree was struck up near the top and traveled down several limbs, all around the tree and put two holes near the bottom of the trunk where it entered the ground. It blew the bark right off the tree and it now has a bunch of 6" wide lines running down the tree that are brown and white.

My wife said it shook the whole house and felt like a bomb went off. Someone 3 miles away said they saw the strike and could actually feel it.

It blew out several electrical things in my neighbor's house (garage door opener, phone, satellite receiver). Our DSL modem seemed to be our only casualty for awhile. It wasn't working then all of a sudden it was.

The questions I have are:

1. Will the tree necessarily die?

2. Since my gas line runs about 125 feet from the tree (my neigbor's line runs 10 feet from the tree) should I have the gas inspected?

3. What has been TBNers experience with lightning strikes? Can they be dangerous if you are just standing in the area where the electricity is dissipated?

 

[MarkV]

Gus, you never say never but in my experience the tree is going to die. I have seen lighting blow the roots right out of the ground on some trees at our place. Also, you can be in danger just being in the area of a strike. My father-in-law got caught in a thunderstorm while on the golf course and 8 of them took shelter in a gazebo. Lighting hit a near by tree and the electricity went underground getting the gazebo group from below. Two of the fellows ended up in the hospital and my father-in-law had burn marks on the bottom of his feet in line with the spikes on his shoes. I am sure the golf shoes did not help them at all.

MarkV

 

[RobS]

I would definitely have the gas line inspected. We had a neighbor whose house was hit by lightning and several months later another neighbor noticed the smell of natural gas. Gas company came out and immediately replaced a section of line that was perforated from the strike. It wasn't leaking badly but over time it had saturated the soil with gas. Better safe than sorry /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[cstocks]

<font color=blue>Will the tree necessarily die?</font color=blue>


There is a huge white oak tree at my uncle's place which is probably about 200 years old. It was struck by lightning a few years ago, leaving a wide, bare streak down one side of the tree from top to bottom. About a third of the tree died. About a month ago the tree was struck again. Now there are two wide streaks running down the north side of the tree from the top branches, down the trunk all the way to the ground. While the first strike did not kill it I fear that the second one might. At this point the tree still looks healthy and is growing another bumper crop of acorns for the deer to feed on this fall.

I hope your tree survives. It take several lifetimes to replace a mature hardwood tree such as an oak.

 

[BKColeman]

<font color=blue>1. Will the tree necessarily die?</font color=blue>

At our last house we had two trees that had been hit. The first seemed to be doing fine. The second died from about half way up. It had several large limbs that were close to the house so we called in a tree surgeon. He told us both trees should go.

Our insurance company paid us for the tree removal (because of the proximity to the house) and paid us for the value of the trees. Since the trees were pretty large, they paid enough we could have 3 more trees removed while he was there and a bunch of stumps grinded.

--Brad

 

[bsauter]

6 years ago lightning struck a large tree along the tree line onthe south end of our pasture. It lew off bark down one side, travelled 900 feet up our farm fencing, hit our electric fence wires, travelled into the barn and blew the tranformer apart while melting the ground wire. Scorched the wood wall on the barn but that was it. We were lucky the barn didn't catch fire.

The tree is still alive and looking very well this year. For a few years it didn't look too good.

A coworker had lightning hit a tree by his house and it killed the tree and blew EVERYTHING out in his house. Anything that was plugged in was toasted. The lightning travelled from the tree roots to his gutter downspout and hit his electric line going into the house. Took months for them to get back to normal.

 

[RichZ]

A few weeks ago we had a huge oak tree in front of our house hit by lightning. It blew out a side of the tree, and the whole tree burst into flames. We had to call the fire department, and it took them about an hour to put out the fire. Now the tree is leaning, and unfortunately, because of it's proximity to our house, we'll have to have it taken down. But the tree survived and is doing well. If it wasn't leaning so badly, I'd leave it, because it's over 200 years old, but unfortunately it could fall on our house, so we'll have to take it down.

 

[BKColeman]

My parents had a transformer hit a few years ago. It went down the line to the house, followed the guttering across the front of the house, down the downspout and hit the paved driveway. It put a huge crack in the driveway. It hit so hard pieces of the asphalt flew up onto the car hoods. It was something else. Nothing in the house was bothered at all though.

 

[Golfgar4]

Rich,

I remember seeing a landscaping show on the T & V that showed how an older tree that was tipped over in a violent thunderstorm was "righted" and the tree survived just fine. I recall that it did involve staking the tree for a year or two until it re-established itself, but it worked.

Maybe you could check with a tree "doc" before dropping a beautiful, old tree like that! Might be worth a phone call!/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[skent]

Three years ago a large hickory tree (24" at base) in our meadow was hit. I noticed the grass in a 4' circle around the tree was dead. Looked like someone sprayed roundup on it. You could see the line down the side where the bolt traveled. The tree never came back.

Seven years ago we were living in a rented house while our new house was being built. A storm rolled in and the pole out front was hit. Every breaker in the panel was tripped. Well pump - fried. Oil burner - fried. Electric Range - Fried. Electronic control on the electric dryer - fried (even though it was turned off). Many various clocks and bulbs - fried. My kids had a BATTERY operated toy that was in the toybox, When you squeeze the front paw, it would play music, right after the strike, the thing was stuck ON. Not even close to a power line, We had to dig it out of the toybox and remove the battery to make it stop.

powerful and unpredictable stuff!

 

[RichZ]

Thanks, Garry, but I had a tree surgeon look at it. When the lightning blew out the sides, we found that the whole inside was all rotted. There's very little left to work with, so unfortunately it's gotta go. My wife and I keep delaying it, because it's like seeing an old friend die, but we're going to have the tree surgeon over soon to take it down./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

 

[Golfgar4]

That's too bad Rich. It sounds like it was a really great tree. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

When we built our last house, it was so barren in the neighborhood because all of the houses were new, that we spent about $4,000.00 to have two large locust trees brought in and planted in the front yard. These things were about 20' tall when they were planted.

Two years ago we had a wind storm (can we say tornado?) come through and split the prettier of the two (of course /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif) down the middle about 1/3 of the way down the trunk. After the storm, my wife says we better get the chain saw out. I say No Way! We're going to get a professional opinion first! So, I get a tree surgeon out to look at it, and he says it can be saved, it just needs some radical surgery! So I say, O.K. Do it to it!

I come home from work one day a week or so later, and Yikes!/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif. It doesn't even remotely look like the tree that I remember. I call the guy up and ask about it. He says we're going to have to give it a couple of years to begin to come back like it was.

Well, it has been a couple of years now, and I have to admit, the tree is starting to look "normal" again. It certainly would've cost a lot more to have it removed and then replaced. It was amazing what this professional was able to do. I guess I was hoping you'd be as lucky as I was. Sorry it didn't work out for you. /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif

 

[rancar]

Hi Gus....

Lightning is a mysterious and unpredictable thing. Not sure if I can answer your questions, but I can relate an experience.

In 1991 the cupola on my barn roof was struck by lightning. It put a hole in the cupola roof and set it on fire. Fortunately, heavy rain at the time knocked down the flames. The lightning though somehow entered the electrical system in the barn (I don't know how it did this because I have no outlets in the cupola. Nearest receptacle of any kind was 30 feet away) and traveled through the underground wiring into my main breaker box in the house....about 150 feet away. The strike blew out my breaker box...had to replace the whole thing. But beyond that, it traveled throughout the electrical system in the house. The incredible surge burned out my microwave, fridge, VCR, telephone, and a clock radio. But, it couldn't care less about the other appliances and electrical things in the house. It seemed to be very selective.

Now, during every lightning storm, we pull all appliances and major electrical things. This is something so unpredictable.

Bob

 

[dgood1]

rancar,

Sounds like you could have used some lightning rods on your barn.

My electrical co-op has installed surge protectors on my poles before the service comes down to the meter. These won't stop a direct hit but will keep out the surges. They have a window on them with a lcd type of indicator. I have to look at them from time to time to make sure that they haven't turned black from the normal silver color.

For those of you not famliar with surge protectors. They have solid state devices that short pulses to ground. They only can handle up to a certain amount of voltage and each time that they are used some of the protection is lost. Hence the indicator circuit to let you know when the protection is gone.

The cost was $ 75.00 each.

Don

 

[Ozarker]

That is almost the same thing that happened to my brother-in-law. Lightening hit his garage that was about 100 feet from the house but it went to the house through the underground wiring. It was such a strike that it caused some of the outlets in the house to try and jump out of the wall. Many of them were pushed out about 1/4". He lost every appliance that was plugged in except the refrigerator.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

my next door neighbor lost half an Ash to a lightning strike. He had a Malibu light at the base of the tree. The current went along the path of the wiring for the light to the transformer and then into the house. It took out just about everything in there electrical.

What blew my mind the most about it was it looked like he'd taken a power washer and hosed out the pathway of the wiring from the tree to the transformer.

In my youth I used to shoot cable trouble in the San Fernando Valley for the GTE. The lightning would hit up in the mountains and come down the cable. You could open the splice closure and have the connectors just blown apart. The telephone cable pairs are wrapped at different rates in a group to keep cross talk down. The groups of pairs are sorta like a rope but not as tightly wrapped. If the cable was aerial sometimes you could see where the current would come down one particular group and as it came close to the suspension strand supporting the cable it would jump through the sheath to it. So every five to eight feet you'd have a burn through.

Another thing interesting about the current is when we'd run a number six ground wire they taught us to make lazy bends when doing corners. It seems if you do a tight ninety the current might blow out the corner. Then of course the ground is no longer good and the current takes the next least resistant path of resistance, say your phone and the ear attached.

 

[TimSullivan]

About twenty years ago I was coaching my son’s Little League team when a bad thunderstorm hit. The kids were all in the dugouts and the coaches headed to the refreshment stand to talk about rescheduling the game.

Four of us were standing by the concrete building under a large overhanging roof. A bolt of lighting hit the power riser that was about ten feet from us and just around a corner of the building. The grounding system worked well and dissipated the charge but the noise and flash of that strike was something else. None of us was injured but it sure did get our attention. We quickly moved the kids and the adults into the cars in the parking lot.

The riser had been installed by a commercial electrical contractor as a gift to the town baseball program. It seems that he had materials left over from a job he had done on a large building site. The wire and system was a lot heavier than than what was called for in the NEC.