Thunder and Lightning! Very Very Frightening!
To Me!
Now that I live in Minnesota, though, I've gotten used to it. However severe weather is becoming a more and more serious problem all across the country (and the world.) Climate change produces unpredictable changes in weather patterns. We aren't used to that yet, and there are still surprises for people to come. We're seeing more and more news about weather disasters every year. I expect that to continue to get worse.
As for lightning, I used to live on the Central Coast of California. Thunderstorms were extremely rare there. You might hear thunder once or twice a year, but it wasn't surprising if multiple years went by without a thunderstorm.
Except this one time. I was sound asleep in the sleeping loft in my tiny cottage near Morro Bay. FLASH! BOOM!. All the lights went out, and I was jolted awake. WTF was that? So, I climbed down the ladder from the loft to find a flashlight. When I turned it on, I immediately noticed that there was a screw-in fuse from the electrical service panel in the living room embedded in the wall across the room. I went to the window. All the lights were out on my street, but there was a fire on the roof of a house across the street. I picked up the landline phone, which miraculously worked, and called 911 to report it.
Then, I put some pants and shoes on and ventured outside. The workshop at the back of my lot was smoking, so I grabbed the garden hose and put out the fire. This was not a good thing, I figured. The fire trucks arrived and extinguished the fire across the street and then came over and checked to make sure my workshop fire was out.
I went back to bed. In the morning, I inspected more closely. The lighting had hit a pole across the street, feeding energy down the wires to my house and the house across the street, starting those fires. My outdoor junction box was burnt up. I called my insurance company and an electrician. By the end of the day, I had a temporary power pole with outlets on it in my yard, and ran extension cords to where they were needed. Every computer in the house was totaled. In the end, the entire house had to be rewired. That was done right away, but my insurance company didn't come through with payment for months.
Such lightning strikes are so rare in that area that the local newspaper and two TV channels sent reporters. I got to be on TV, saying, "Oh, well. Stuff happens. I have insurance, so it'll all get fixed."
Weird stuff, and it made me wary of lightning and thunder for quite some time. But, after moving to Minnesota, I just had to get used to it. In fact, during the summer months and even in the spring, every rainstorm is a thunder storm. This morning, for example, there's plenty of lightning and thunder going out outside my office window. "Oh, well..."
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But lightning striking your house or a nearby power line - that's how your computer gets fried. You can lose everything on your computer hard drive when that happens, if it's not backed up and disconnected from the power. Well who thinks to do that?
Once it happens and you lose everything, you'll never go to bed again without backing up your data. The chances of it happening to you are much greater in the Midwestern states I think.
