Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Weather
Things are pretty quiet here today so I'll tell you about what happened last month - July 12, to be specific. I was at home, just getting started with a 16:00 conference call. There was a thunderstorm starting - nothing out of the ordinary for a hot hazy July afternoon. Enough people had showed up for the conference call to consider it a quorum, and we were starting to get down to business when ... it happened. The loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard. We've all been through a number of thunderstorms, and some have been pretty intense. After over half a century, I've experienced some really memorable ones. But this lightning bolt just put all of them to shame. I'm not quite sure what happened next. I think after I landed back in the chair again I sat there for several seconds in stunned silence. It took some time for my hearing to come back. I think then I said some things that were not very professional and probably should not have been said in a business conference call. That didn't really matter though. I wasn't on the conference call anymore. The electricity, the phones, and the cable service were all dead. There was a strange smell in the air of fresh ozone and something burning.
Finally it occurred to me that I should tell the people on the conference call what happened, since I was supposed to be one of the main participants. I dialed in on my cell phone, and tried to describe what happened. I probably wasn't very coherent. My boss then explained to the other participants (in various parts of North America) that we had had a lot of nasty weather here. At the time, I didn't realize the significance of this statement. They then decided to postpone the conference, and I went on to inspect the house to make sure it was still all there. Everything appeared to be intact. I still was not about to go outside to check out the situation there. Then I called the neighbor across the street. She answered, so I knew that not all of the phones in the neighborhood were out. However, she had no electricity. She said she heard things popping and sizzling in the house when the lightning hit.
I don't remember if there was any more lightning after that. It probably did a good job of stabilizing the electrons in the air. After about half an hour, there was no more lightning, the sun was out, and things looked fairly safe, so I went out and started up the generator. It appeared that the electrical stuff in the house was all still operational. I then decided to go out for a drive and find out where the lightning had hit, expecting to see a large crater in the ground somewhere. I found that the power was off only at our end of the block. I found another neighbor at the house a couple doors down from us standing outside and asked if he had electricity. He said he didn't. He also said he knew where the lightning had hit. He pointed to a tree across the street (at the home of the neighbor I had talked with earlier). It still looked intact, but was missing a very large section of bark. He said he was out getting his mail, carrying an umbrella, when the lightning hit. He was standing less than 30 feet away. I have to admire him for his courage.
I determined that the phone outage was due to some wires in our house that got shorted out, and I was able to bypass them. The cable company was out at 4:00 the next morning to do the necessary repairs to get their system working. I then had to replace a couple splitters that didn't survive the event. The electricity was off for about 24 hours. The power company had to replace a transformer. Later on I found a couple light switches that were no longer working. A few days later, we had malfunctions in a couple computers. I couldn't be sure, but these may have been a result of that lightning bolt too.
I expected that I would have a lot to talk about at work the next day. With no cable service (no TV, no Internet), I had no access to news but I was certain that the news media would be buzzing about this event. ("In tonight's news, we have anarchy and a fresh wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, the outbreak of full-scale war in Lebanon, but first we take you to outer Suburbia where the Lightning Bolt From Hell left a whole cul-de-sac in darkness.") Well, I knew something was amiss as I got down to the last quarter mile to the office. The road was closed. There was a police vehicle blocking the way, but no one there to tell me why. I then went around through the back roads and approached from the other way, and found the road closed there too. Then I finally decided to turn on a local radio station, and discovered that while I was sitting at home getting all excited over a little bit of thunder, a tornado had come through just a couple hundred yards from where I work. Finally, I parked a couple blocks away and hiked through the woods. What I found was a building that was still there, no broken windows, power still on, everything apparently OK. I found out later that no one who was in the building even knew there had been a tornado. It got very dark, very windy, the power went off for a few seconds, and then it passed. However, people found out shortly afterward that there was no way to go north from there. At least one person went across the river, went north on the parkway there, and then came back across the river. I later drove by where the tornado had come through, and found the damage was impressive indeed. A large section of trees by the side of the road just were not there anymore. Apparently the tornado was just far enough above the ground that no cars were affected by it.
Still, the extreme weather was not over with. Early the following week, another monster thunder/wind storm came through the southern part of the county and left widespread damage there. I still haven't seem the extent of that damage. I assumed that they had enough worries without sightseers coming through to gawk at it. Fortunately things have been a little bit quieter since then.
I wasn't expecting it to look like this. I would have thought there would be burn marks or something. Given the volume of the thunder that accompanied this, I would have thought the whole tree would be vaporized. We are all wondering what will be the long-term effect on it.
Finally it occurred to me that I should tell the people on the conference call what happened, since I was supposed to be one of the main participants. I dialed in on my cell phone, and tried to describe what happened. I probably wasn't very coherent. My boss then explained to the other participants (in various parts of North America) that we had had a lot of nasty weather here. At the time, I didn't realize the significance of this statement. They then decided to postpone the conference, and I went on to inspect the house to make sure it was still all there. Everything appeared to be intact. I still was not about to go outside to check out the situation there. Then I called the neighbor across the street. She answered, so I knew that not all of the phones in the neighborhood were out. However, she had no electricity. She said she heard things popping and sizzling in the house when the lightning hit.
I don't remember if there was any more lightning after that. It probably did a good job of stabilizing the electrons in the air. After about half an hour, there was no more lightning, the sun was out, and things looked fairly safe, so I went out and started up the generator. It appeared that the electrical stuff in the house was all still operational. I then decided to go out for a drive and find out where the lightning had hit, expecting to see a large crater in the ground somewhere. I found that the power was off only at our end of the block. I found another neighbor at the house a couple doors down from us standing outside and asked if he had electricity. He said he didn't. He also said he knew where the lightning had hit. He pointed to a tree across the street (at the home of the neighbor I had talked with earlier). It still looked intact, but was missing a very large section of bark. He said he was out getting his mail, carrying an umbrella, when the lightning hit. He was standing less than 30 feet away. I have to admire him for his courage.
I determined that the phone outage was due to some wires in our house that got shorted out, and I was able to bypass them. The cable company was out at 4:00 the next morning to do the necessary repairs to get their system working. I then had to replace a couple splitters that didn't survive the event. The electricity was off for about 24 hours. The power company had to replace a transformer. Later on I found a couple light switches that were no longer working. A few days later, we had malfunctions in a couple computers. I couldn't be sure, but these may have been a result of that lightning bolt too.
I expected that I would have a lot to talk about at work the next day. With no cable service (no TV, no Internet), I had no access to news but I was certain that the news media would be buzzing about this event. ("In tonight's news, we have anarchy and a fresh wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, the outbreak of full-scale war in Lebanon, but first we take you to outer Suburbia where the Lightning Bolt From Hell left a whole cul-de-sac in darkness.") Well, I knew something was amiss as I got down to the last quarter mile to the office. The road was closed. There was a police vehicle blocking the way, but no one there to tell me why. I then went around through the back roads and approached from the other way, and found the road closed there too. Then I finally decided to turn on a local radio station, and discovered that while I was sitting at home getting all excited over a little bit of thunder, a tornado had come through just a couple hundred yards from where I work. Finally, I parked a couple blocks away and hiked through the woods. What I found was a building that was still there, no broken windows, power still on, everything apparently OK. I found out later that no one who was in the building even knew there had been a tornado. It got very dark, very windy, the power went off for a few seconds, and then it passed. However, people found out shortly afterward that there was no way to go north from there. At least one person went across the river, went north on the parkway there, and then came back across the river. I later drove by where the tornado had come through, and found the damage was impressive indeed. A large section of trees by the side of the road just were not there anymore. Apparently the tornado was just far enough above the ground that no cars were affected by it.
Still, the extreme weather was not over with. Early the following week, another monster thunder/wind storm came through the southern part of the county and left widespread damage there. I still haven't seem the extent of that damage. I assumed that they had enough worries without sightseers coming through to gawk at it. Fortunately things have been a little bit quieter since then.
I wasn't expecting it to look like this. I would have thought there would be burn marks or something. Given the volume of the thunder that accompanied this, I would have thought the whole tree would be vaporized. We are all wondering what will be the long-term effect on it.
# posted by Ray @ 06:35 
