Lightening seems to find us at home more than we like. We were hit twice last year and so far, twice this year (that we know of…could be more, if we are not around when a storm rolls through). I think it is because we have a huge copper top on our chimney that is built all the way up with stone rocks (there is metal in rocks). It attracts lightening. In addition, we have a large number of very tall evergrees around us in a valley that is traditionally void of tall trees.
This last strike definitely hit our lightening rod on the house, but must have also split off (we think) and hit the big maple tree we have in front. Both Sue and I were home. The tree has a little split in the main trunk and bark was blown off. The lightening must have traveled in the ground from the tree to electrical conduit under the garage, went up and fried our garage door opener, but continued in the ground to somehow find the well pump electrical. It fried the well pump and the associated electrical box for it. We replaced the well pump and electrical (some video and pictures below), will replace the garage door opener and hopefully the tree was not too badly hit so we can leave it (assuming it lives…we have a tree expert coming next week).
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Property, Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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