Re: Pictures of damage from lightning striking the shed at my grandparent's house on June 28th
Posted by Chris in Tampa on 7/7/2010, 12:48 pm
My dad and I were actually joking with my grandparents about how it must have followed us. And we made some jokes too about how while the lightning likes us, the rain does not. We needed rain up to about a week before we left. Luckily, we did start picking some up on the very first day of summer and then we start getting just enough. But, after we left, Tampa got 4 plus inches while we were gone! Meanwhile, aside from that big storm that rolled through when we got to my grandparents house, no rain the entire time and they get rain up there all the time lately. But I don't think a lot of what we got while we were gone was electrical. Seems like just a lot of tropical rains. Clocks were fine.

I thought about it maybe being wind damage since there was nothing burned, but we just couldn't find any evidence of where else it might have struck. At first the satellite dish made sense, but there was no visible damage. The garage doors and the phone and electrical box were all the most damaged and they are right under it, so it might be the case, but it did not seem windy. I just asked my dad and he said it was not that windy. And that area has had a ton of thunderstorms recently and no damage. We looked closely at the few remaining trees my grandparents do have. I say few remaining because the wind has not been kind to their trees in past years. They lost all of the big bradford pear trees they had although they are growing back now.  I think maybe most of the energy might have hit the shed and maybe something forked off and hit the satellite dish. Or it might be that it traveled up the wires from the ground into the boxes and then up into the satellite dish. My dad thinks maybe the lightning struck and then maybe came back down again real quick like it sometimes does. The shingles that look blackened away from the strike are actually shingles that used to be where the hole is now, they just got thrown over covering up some other shingles. It's hard to see that in the lower quality pictures I posted.

And as for all the thunderstorms they do get, their house sits real low in the area and that red dirt ditch behind the shed helps funnel the water away from their yard. That was constructed a few years ago after heavy downpours would flood parts of the underside of their house. When it really, really rains, that is a river of water back there.

I'm not sure about the metal in the back. Nothing looked blackened on that metal rod, because I thought that maybe it hit the roof and went for the rod. I'll have to take a look at those lightning facts. I didn't know it could strike just two miles away and sometimes not be heard.
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Pictures of damage from lightning striking the shed at my grandparent's house on June 28th - Chris in Tampa, 7/7/2010, 3:41 am
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