Dazzle Me With Lightning...

On the evening of 18 July, a group of trees in our backyard, a few yards from the swimming pool, were struck by lightning.

We were in that pool, saw/heard the storm coming, and decided to make a speedy exit from the water and sit on the back porch to watch the storm roll in. 15 minutes later and after 2 strikes that were a tad too close for comfort (complete with a humming that I interpreted as the sound being made by the electric fields, or more specifically, the positively-charged ionic channels of the positive, or upward streamers, that were developing off of our house and our trees), we went inside the house... No more than 30 seconds later, the trees by the pool were struck.

I, of course, was standing in front of a window that faces those trees: Hair on the arms went up (the upward streamers, this time being intensified as the negatively-charger leaders from the clouds approached, increasing the localized electric field strength), heard a distinct buzzing snap in my right ear (probably the corona discharge of the intensifying upward streamers), and saw the bolt strike (“attachment”, or the downward leader connecting with the upward leader causing the discharge, or “return stroke”).

Animation of connecting leaders forming lightning from Wikipedia.

The lightning traveled down all three trees, and into the ground, apparently following the root systems. One of those roots snakes toward the pool. The bolt traveled along it, blowing out the dirt above as it went, and slamming into the pool’s concrete apron, chipping and cracking it as it continued its journey into the pool itself.

From there, it must have followed the water lines, or maybe the wire to the underwater pool light, or maybe the grounding wires, right into the pool’s breaker box. So, what you see with the scouring of the trees are the flash-boiling of a tree’s cambium water by temperatures that can be upwards of 50,000 Kelvin, which exploded out the bark. 

The ground paths? Dug the same way… Steam explosions. In addition, as I live in a region with sandy soil, fulgurites were formed as the lightning’s plasma channel melted the sand. 

No clue what the polarity of the lightning was, but let’s assume it was of the predominate negative variety… The average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amperes (30 kA), and transfers 15 coulombs of electric charge and 500 megajoules of energy. Large bolts can carry up to 120 kA and 350 coulombs. Needless to say, the pool didn’t stop all of the lightning’s power… Some of the charge passed into the house. The fire alarm in the house went off… Fire department showed up, but no fire. Apparently the lightning shorted out the alarm’s fire detection system. As for other things being shorted out… Well, actually more like cooked, fried, and melted, the computerized salt regulator on the pool pump has gone to a better place.

And here’s a fun fact… Surge protectors can do nothing against the power of lightning. Even though every electronic toy in the house is plugged into a serge protector, damage did occur. Luckily, it was minor and localized to the bedroom that shares the wall with the pool’s breaker box. So, minus a dead Direct TV receiver and Blu-Ray player, and a damaged HDMI port on a TV, we were lucky. Even the pool pump survived (minus the salt regulator, of course).  Of course, breakers for the house were tripped, and required inspection by an electrician before flipping them back on. And, the alarm company had to be called back twice... In addition to replacing fire detection sensors, they had to replace other sensors, because over the course of a week, they began to short out, one by one, and the alarm system would go off every single time there was a storm.  Basically, the house turned into a lightning detector... Wonderful thing at 3 am.

But wait! There's more!!!

On 06 August, 19 days later, those same exact trees were stuck by lightning again. We were in the aforementioned bedroom watching the storm, looking dead at those trees when it struck...

This time, the lightning meant business. Forget going directly to ground. After scouring its way down the trees, it blew out of their trunks and slammed into the apron of the pool at the water’s edge in three places, shattering and exploding the stone.

Again, the charge traveled to the pool’s breaker box and into the house. However, as we had everything unplugged this time (you learn), there was no damage, with only main breakers of the house having to be reset (after inspection by another electrician, of course, who also did a sweep of the entire house this time and found nothing). And again, the pool pump survived the assault, but the pool itself clearly requires a bit of maintenance.

For both lighting strikes, I suspect the pool absorbed the bulk of the energy, literally saving the house. But that’s the thing… BOTH strikes? Obviously, there is some funny business going on in regards to where I live...

The neighborhood is situated on a hill, but my house it far from being at its highest point. However, the trees that keep being struck are probably some of the tallest in the area (well, one of them is). But, that still does not neatly account for this insanity. There has to be something under them that is making the spot so conducive to lightning strikes. I suspect that it is a combination of the elevation, the tall trees, high metal content in the underlying soil, and the wonderful conductor/grounder of the pool, that results in the place in which I chose to live being a spectacular natural abnormality. To make it even more daffy, I’d love to speculate that the meteor that hit the area 81 million years ago left a nice iron piece of itself which is not buried beneath by backyard… But that’s probably pushing it.

Then again, it’s not like this situation is believable to begin with…

I mean really… If that big tree in the center falls/when it is cut down (as it is most certainly dead… all three trees are dead and need to be removed), and I see a geode fall out of its roots… That’s it... I saw that movie. I am not sticking around to watch a bunch of little naked demons come crawling out of the hole.

©New Century Entertainment Corporation.

Of course, some would say that there has been at least one documentary about a haunted swimming pool, and Craig T. Nelson took care of it like a man. Well, I am less of a man than Craig T. Nelson... If that’s the case, I need a Tangina.

©MGM

Then again, we are situated on what used to be Indian land… And 5 minutes after the second strike occurred, there appeared a raccoon in one of the trees, and a hawk squawking overhead… Probably a good idea not to bury anything dead in the ground around here…

From Wikipedia.

If I was a suspicious man, I'd say it sure looks like something doesn't want us to live here... So much for the anecdote of lightning never striking the same place twice. We absolutely blow away the statistics.