lightning strike

[junkhound]

Nice lightning display yesterday, rare for this area.

Grandkids watching out a window, saw direct strike to their shop's gable light fixture 30 ft from house, gable about 25 ft high. 120 ft fir trees within 20 ft other side, metal capped house chimney 10 ft higher than the shop gable 30 ft away. Yet lightning went to the lower spot, probably since that particular fixture has almost a straight shot of 12 ga down to a concrete encased electrode thru the main panel. So much for the 30 degree cone theory.

wifi and router zapped, nothing else damaged, have MOVs on most circuits. Power failure 10 min later due to another nearby strike.

I need to get over there this week to see if there is any wiring damage. One grandson had on earphones while watching the lightning, connected to computer, got a shock thru the headphones. House and shop fed from same pad mounted transformer 170 ft away.

I'll take pictures if there is any wiring damage, the light is fed from accessible attic.

 

[Tony S]

I’ve seen two direct strikes.

The first I was on the top floor of a battery of lime kilns the mass of steel just dissipated it. I dragged a chair on to a hoist platform 110ft in the air to watch, I was p**sed off with running around resetting breakers.

The second was my local pub, that didn’t fair too well. Two televisions, an Xbox and other bits of electronics exploded. I was OK I was on hand pulled ale, the electric larger pump was fried.

 

[jaggedben]

... Yet lightning went to the lower spot, probably since that particular fixture has almost a straight shot of 12 ga down to a concrete encased electrode thru the main panel. So much for the 30 degree cone theory.
....

I'm doubtful that the factors you mention have anything directly to do with it. Electrical theory just doesn't work that way. Resistance has no effect on potential until current flows.

It's possible that something about the lighting fixture circuit electrical flow had an effect on the potential difference. The size of the wire or the distance to the grounding electrode probably wouldn't matter much to that.

It's also possible this is just an outlier.

 

[GoldDigger]

If a lightning strike begins with multiple "feelers" before the main discharge, impedance in a particular path may influence the degree of ionization along that path, in turn influencing which path the main strike will follow.

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