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 past summer was not quite all about working on the new house and property. I did take some time in outdoor activities.
Biathlon
Since the property did come with a little shooting range on it complete with timbers as a backstop, no doubt I take advantage of that little gem. I try to get out once per week and usually take my .22 biathlon rifle and do some running and shooting. Some targets below I scanned for safe-keeping.
I’ve owned a pair of rock climbing shows for 20 years. They have never gotten much use. I don’t own other safety equipment, so my rock climbing has always been staying very close to the ground and going horizontal versus vertical (called Bouldering). I really enjoy it and I now do it at least once per week on our big rock chimney. Maybe after I get our main barn repaired, I can build a climbing wall on it.
We have not checked out our local area too much for hiking and biking activities. I am slowly building a map of stuff I find via online research. In the future, we’ll start to do more of these activities.
I am a weather nut and love Wunderground for all the weather data and maps it puts at our fingertips. We’ve had a very active summer thunderstorm and monsoon season, so its been pretty wild watching storms come rolling through. The house was hit by lightening twice (minor damage the first strike, but after that, we installed lightening rods), we were hit with 1 inch hail in one storm and I saw a tornado funnel cloud. It did not touch down, but was my first tornado experience. I took two images of local area thunderstorm activity from Wunderground. The little black squares represent lightening strikes. The second image shows a storm that was bearing down on our house and the purple triangle represented a tornado signature. The storm veered north and ended up missing us and also weakened.
I spent 3 days at the Sheraton Wild Horse Resort in Chandler, AZ for our semi-annual Vitamin and Adult Nutrition trade show. Nice resort, but did not get the chance to enjoy it much, as meetings go all day and then there is evening dinner, entertainment with work associates and more work. Temperature was over 110 degrees, so it was nice being inside, although I enjoy hot weather. First night there we encountered a lightening storm at 11 pm and it knocked out power to the entire hotel. I was getting to sleep anyway. It came back on at some point in the night. Images below of the hotel and our suite where we had retailer meetings.
The A-frame chimney (photo below) was struck by lightening over the weekend. We were both in the house when it happened. Fortunately, only minor damage. It knocked out a few electrical switches and fried the phone, modem and answering machine. We had planned to install a lightening rod, but this happened before we could get it in place.
Entries (RSS)