# Lightning strike hit my shop while I was working. Scary.



## Dcase (Jul 7, 2010)

The other night I was out working in my shop as there was a storm brewing outside. The storm was nothing huge just your avg lightning and thunder storm. I actually enjoyed the storm because it lowered the temp in my shop which has been like 90 deg the past couple weeks. I didn't think much of the storm and kept working away.

All of a sudden there was a very bright flash of light and a sound as if someone set up a firecracker right in my shop. I saw what looked like sparks shoot out from under my garage door. My heart stopped for a sec because I have never experienced a lightning strike first hand before. I just stood there frozen and took a min to take in what had just happened. I knew lightning had hit my shop but I didn't know where. I kept watching the ceiling waiting for it to burst into flames or something. I didn't loose any power so that made me feel a bit better. It was dark and raining so I couldn't really look around outside to see if there was any damage. I just put my stuff away and called it a night.

The next morning I went out to check on the shop and I found the strike point. The lightning hit the concrete slab directly in front of my garage door. The strike missed my garage by two or three inches. I could tell where it hit because there was a patch of the concrete slab that was white/light grey in color and the top stones on the slab were all glassed over and smooth like. That explains the light/sparks I saw coming from under my garage door which was closed at the time.

When the lightning hit I was standing at my work bench which is maybe 12 feet from the spot the bolt hit. It all happened so fast but that feeling of fear I felt will be stuck with me forever. I am very lucky it didn't actually hit the building as it could have caused some real damage to both myself and my shop.

Its doubtful this will happen again but I don't think I will be working out in my shop anymore during storms. And if I do I will make sure I am not running any of my power tools.


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## DaddyZ (Jan 28, 2010)

Glad youre OK, Lightning is a wonderous element !!!


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## wstokes (Mar 20, 2009)

Yikes! We sure needed that rain though.


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## wasmithee (Jan 10, 2011)

Hopefully your shop is equipped with a lightning rod. Odd that it struck the ground and not your shop.

Glad to hear that you are OK.


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

Dude. Scary.


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## Rick Dennington (Aug 27, 2009)

That was a seriously close call. That lightening is nasty stuff. I was out fishing a tournament one time, and lightening struck my rod, and blew off about 15" of the rod. I threw that thing down like a hot tater…....lol. 
I should of known better than to have a rod sticking up in the air with lightening all around….it's a wonder it didn't blow me out of the boat, or worse…...But my mind was on the money, and the fish I needed to catch…..I learned my lesson on that trip. You see lightening dancing all around….head for shelter or the shore.
Glad you came away unscathed, and escaped the strike…...be careful out there…


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## Dcase (Jul 7, 2010)

I don't have a lightning rod on my shop or even on my house for that matter. I never even thought of the idea of having one. I did find it very strange that it hit where it did but I have no doubt that thats where it hit. The discoloring and glass like feeling of the concrete was just not there before. I guess it shows it can hit anywhere.


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## crank49 (Apr 7, 2010)

You sure that wasn't a "Phaser hit" or a "Disrupter blast"?


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

It was going for you, Dan. I might consider a rod


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## Rick Dennington (Aug 27, 2009)

Dan,

That's kind of strange that you don't have a lightening rod on your house. All houses built are supposed to have one installed at the time of construction. All the houses I ever owned had them, and when I built my shop I have now the contractor put one in the ground about 6-8' deep. I thought that was in the building code? My house I have now has one…...strange..!!


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## WayneC (Mar 8, 2007)

That is pretty wild.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

My wife claims to have been struck by lighning when she was a kid about 10. I think it was just very very close!! She was outdoors on a play field. Glad you are OK!


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## donwilwol (May 16, 2011)

I was doing some plumbing in my house when a thunderstorm came up. Like you Dan, I didn't give it a second thought; after all I was in the basement. Next thing I knew I was set back a couple of steps. Copper pipe conducts electricity pretty well, and so do I. It obviously wasn't a direct hit, (lucky me) but it was enough that the project was on hold until the storm passed.


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## chrisstef (Mar 3, 2010)

Scary for sure.

"Been struck by lightning fif-fif-fif" 
"Five times, wow that …" 
"Fifty Five tttiiimmess … in in in the head" 
(name that movie)


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## HorizontalMike (Jun 3, 2010)

Lightning rods worked great BEFORE the advent of modern day electronics. Not so well now that all our homes and shops are so heavily wired. I, personally would think twice before hastily installing a lightning rod system. You could actually be making the situation worse by attracting lightning strikes (at the rod) in your area. After much reading I decided against lightning rods on my observatory and house. And this was AFTER a nearby strike took out my observatory's electronics (the hit/spike came in on the telephone line). FWIW, I even considered a Faraday cage, very expensive and would still probably not be enough to protect my electronics from a direct hit.

Insurance, high quality surge protection, proper grounding (ONE not multiple), and best practices of *unplugging* unused devices ended up being the most efficient and effective protection for me.

Your mileage may vary… This topic is a can of worms and I am sure the opinions will start flying shortly.


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## Dcase (Jul 7, 2010)

Rick- My home was built after the year 2000 so its rather new construction and it all passed code. I can assure you there is no lightning rod so it must not be required by code where I live.

Mike- I am not super concerned with the electronic tools because I do have good insurance and they are all replaceable. I guess my biggest fear would be fire. I think its rare for lightning to start a fire but I have a lot that is not replaceable thats in my shop thats non electric


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## Trev_Batstone (Jul 29, 2011)

Glad you're OK. I have a friend who has been struck personally by lightning 3 times, he has no after effects from it and he is fine, but we have a new nickname for him now. We call him 'Sparky'.


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## HorizontalMike (Jun 3, 2010)

Dan,
Surges from nearby strikes are the most common way lightning enters your house. Direct hits are really rare. My observatory is somewhat of a special case in that I have over five figure$ in electronics that are very sensitive to voltage surges and the like. Hence my "best practices" and multiple surge protection.

Most WW shop stuff should be more robust and lightning resistant provided you ground properly to your main box at the house. A second grounding source can be asking for trouble. Check your codes for exceptions. And ask Topa!


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## Grandpa (Jan 28, 2011)

I am with Mike on the rods. None of the homes in SW Oklahoma have them unless they are really old. My shop is a steel building. I have the skin and frame grounded to a copper plated rod driven 8 ft. deep. I am not sure there is enough moisture at 8 ft. today to conduct but we can only try. I have heard and I preface this statement with "heard" that a a flag pole is a good thing since it stands alone and is tall. It attracts the lightening and keeps it away from your house at least a few yards away. I don't have one myself. I have had lightening go close enough to my house that it tripped a GFCI breaker in the breaker panel! Scared me right there. Around here TV antenna poles attract lightening. We are in a rural area and there are still a lot of folks on the antenna or have old 50 or 60 ft poles standing. Those do attract. I have some tall trees around my house. Think I should cut them? I am not aware of any building code that requires a lightening rod. It is not mentioned in the *Principles and Standards of Home Inspections*. I just checked it. We are seeing more whole house surge protectors. These go into the circuit breaker panel. How good are they? I am not sure. I think lightening happens so fast that it will jump most things before they can trip. Unplug and get indoors is probably the best protection. I also think I have read that most people that are struck by lightening are experiencing a storm that is 8 miles away.


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## Grandpa (Jan 28, 2011)

I have reread this and I think Rick is talking about grounding rods. I was thinking of a roof mounted lightening rod with large conductors that go to a grounding rod. Those are the lightening rods they used here years ago. Probably before electricty was common. The electrical system in your homei is required to have a grounding rod. My shop has its own electrical system that comes from the meter so it is treated like a primary panel.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

Hospitals are required to have lightening rods by code. Even have them here is Water World, aka, Western WA, where nobody else ever has.


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## Rick Dennington (Aug 27, 2009)

Grandpa, you are absolutely correct in your assumption about the "grounding rods". That was what I was thinking of when I said lightening rods…And no, I do not have a lightening rod on top of my house…lol. The g.r. for my house is also buried up about 8', and the corner of my shop has the same rod at the corner.. Like Grandpa, my shop is a stand-alone, on its on meter, and is grounded that way….sorry about the confusion…


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## HorizontalMike (Jun 3, 2010)

I also have a grounding rod in the corner of my shop as well as at the house. To make this safe, both grounding rods have a direct home run line to each other and NO electrical equipment between them. This is needed because each grounding rod will have a different potential to carry electricity and when a ground surge (lightning) occurs, that "difference" in potential will seek the easiest route to the "best" ground. If that easiest route is through your home's interior wiring, you lose big time. A single grounding source is nearly always the best and is usually required.

If I recall correctly, the only exceptions allowing for an additional grounding rod deal with free standing garages that have NO OTHER electrical conductors other than the primary voltage supply. In other words, NO phone lines, NO CAT5, NO water lines, NO metal gas lines, etc. NO nothing that could conduct electricity back toward the house. Again, check local codes.


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## Kentuk55 (Sep 21, 2010)

I am also glad you and your shop are alright. Mother Nature is a "Beauty", AND a "Beast" in my eyes. about a month ago, an 80' tall tree across the street from me got hit by lightning. Really weird, but, if you divided the tree into thirds, imagine the center, (just the center third) getting split in the middle, and a 5-6' section of that blowing out. (from the inside out) Un-Freekin believable.!!


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## mtenterprises (Jan 10, 2011)

A couple years ago I was standing inside my garage shop during a thunder storm. The rain was blowing in so the floor was wet. My welding table, all steel, sets next to the garage door where the rain was blowing in. Well there I stood next to the table and there was a lightning strike in the neighbor's backyard, that electricity followed the water into the garage through the steel table jumped across to all 10 fingers, I SAW THE SPARKS, and out through me back to the floor. Yes it was shocking in more than one way. I think I was lucky that I was standing on a rubber mat even if it was damp with rain. And yes it does make you leary about being out there in thunder storms for a while. When I got caught on my motorcycle in thunder storms I run for shelter.


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## JasonWagner (Sep 10, 2009)

Chrisstef- it was 66 times and the movie was The Great Outdoors…what do I win?


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## studie (Oct 14, 2009)

Wow Scary for sure! Years ago a 100' Douglas fir was hit by lightning and ( from what the power company man told me) leaped out of the ground on fire and hit a phone line. Well that phone line spiked many houses including mine. There are filters (fuses) in the phone exterior control box but my alarm was wired in before these filters so it fried the alarm system. They say these filters are to protect the phone from accidental 110 lines from you but with the power of lightning you could die if you were using a land line at the time of a strike if you were bare footed on a good ground! I don't understand it but when the alarm company came out we found the 110 converter had been blown away from it's 110 outlet across the room!


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## SnowyRiver (Nov 14, 2008)

Being an amateur radio operator, I have had my tower hit twice. The tower is 60 ft tall and right next to the house. The first time it was in the middle of the night. I remember laying in bed watching the lightning outside when suddenly there was a flash and bang all at the same time. The entire house shook. I got up to check everything and found the garage door open. The door came up so fast the bracket put a bend in the motor housing. I also had smoke coming out of the VCR and when I got to my radio room there was a blue haze in the room. Some of the equipment was burned out. The next day I found all of the cables from the tower hanging loose on the tower and melted. The lightning hit the weather instruments on the tower and blew them off the tower. I was lucky it didnt start the house wiring on fire.

The second time was similar. The tower cables cross over the romex wiring for the house inside the garage. All of the romex plastic outer covering was blown off and just the bare wires were hanging along the ceiling of the garage.

I since figured out that the tower was getting charged up and when a highly charged cloud went over it drew the arch. I have since put lightning arresters on the tower to bleed the static and I have also installed a electrical box surge protector on the main box. I have also put surge protectors on all my electronics as well. So far so good.


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## DonnyBahama (Jun 21, 2011)

I do a lot of computer and audio/video consulting on the side. We get a LOT of lightning in the Tucson area, so I always tell people, "Get GOOD surge protectors for all your computer and audio/video gear." I further explain that the easiest way to tell the GOOD ones from the cheap POS ones (aside from the price) is the big dollar insurance policy that it comes with. This is almost always advertised in big, bold lettering on the outer package.

Not long ago, while in WalMart, I saw Philips surge protectors with a $100K insurance policy. Being at WalMart, the price was right, and Philips is a good brand that I tend to trust.

A few days ago, I was telling a computer client about the need for GOOD surge protectors and I mentioned the Philips units at WM. She called me a couple of days ago to let me know that she bought a couple and took the time to read the fine print. *They explicitly exclude lightning strikes.*

Just thought you all should know.


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## Grandpa (Jan 28, 2011)

I bought a surge protector that guarantees replacement of all your damaged electronics….as long as the power was turned on when the incident occurred. You are correct about Tucson. In the 3 years I spent there it seemed like someone was struck by lightening every year. The persons body I mean not their home. I remember seeing the last front cover on Life magazine when it stopped publishing around '73 and there were 7 bolts of lightening striking Kitt Peak. Interesting photo.


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