Effects of lightning

[KF5BET]

This happened a couple of days ago.

Got home from work and the girls told me that lightning struck very close to the house. They said they saw a very white and bright light from the living room window.

Everything seemed ok. The next day, I noticed that the camper shore power was off. Started checking and a gfci plug for the storage shed was tripped and couldn't be reset. I then saw the electric fence controller laying on the ground. When I picked it up I noticed that it was broken and when I turned it over, it was burned to a crisp.

The only thing I can think of is that lightning struck the fence and backfed into the controller burning it up, knocking it off the wall and destroying the gfci. The fence does have a 4' ground rod installed right outside the controller location.

Electricity...got to love it... but definitely respect it.

[Radio]

My father had a "weekend farm" on which we raised cattle and vegetables. All totaled there was about a hundred acres, fenced and cross-fenced. There was a mobile home on the property, with a telephone. When a good thunderstorm would come along, that old telephone would make noises like some one snapping handfuls of pencils, with a "DING" from the bell now and then.

But what was really cool is there was a man-gate into the pastures neat the trailer. Sometimes after the storm we noticed the latch on the man-gate had been welded shut! You had to rare back and give it a good kick to get the latch open. We never found a place where lightning had hit the fence, but I figure enough current was induced into the fence to make a little spot weld there at that latch.

Taught me to respect lightning!

[wa8yxm]

Police station where I worked, the tower out in back took a direct hit, Knocked us completly off line, radios, phones both went down (But the comptuers rebooted themselves and we came back up in a couple of minutes) and all appeared good save for a circuit breaker,,, The one feeding the tower,,, It too survived well enough to work.

Next business day the radio techs went into the tower and found one battery charger/converter, Much the same kind of thing we have in our motor homes and trailers... Or should I say they found half of it, they still have not found the other half. Blown to plasma they assumed.