Mother Nature strikes me (again).......

For those that don't know, when I was younger, our house was struck by lightning. There was a wall behind the headboard of my bed. On the other side of that wall was a hallway and there was a fire detector hung on that wall. When the lightning hit, that fire detector on the other side of the wall from where I was sleeping was blown off the wall, flew into the bathroom across the hall and landed in the bathtub about 15 feet from where it was originally hung. We later looked at the fire detector and it was black from the charge that it took from the lightning bolt.

We were very lucky in that it was pouring down rain that night. Although a foot-wide hole was blown in the top of our house that night, the downpour kept the fire to a very small burn. There was just a little patching required on the top of the roof. Most of the electronics in the house were cooked. So it made for a good story with an insurance claim attached.

Last Wednesday, a huge downpour moved into our area. It was just dumping buckets of water around my house. I was on the second floor of my house playing a video game.

WHAM!!!!!!

What the?!?!?! The whole room lit up like an enormous flash cube with a simultaneous loud crash. I had a good hunch what that sound meant, though I wasn't sure how close that lightning strike was to my house. I immediately walked through the upper level of the house, looking for any signs of smoke or damage. Didn't really see anything, so I assumed a near-miss. No trees were down in the yard either. The video game was
not interrupted, so I was pretty sure it didn't hit the house.

I went back to playing my game. After a few minutes, Mrs. Lime calls and says she's in the driveway and that the garage doors won't open. I figured the power got hit by the lightning and caused an issue. So I head down to check the circuit breaker and find the garage breaker kicked off. I went back up and found the garage doors in working order.

As I walked into the garage, I noticed a plastic cover laying on the garage floor. I was puzzled and picked it up. When I flipped it over, I noticed something very familiar. It was covered in black burn marks, just like that fire detector that flew through the house when I was a kid. I knew then that the house had been hit by lightning. I looked over at the controller for the sprinkler system and this is what I saw.........



That, my friends, is one toasted sprinkler system controller. Thankfully, the builder had grounded the metal decorations on our roof, so the damage in the house was pretty minimal. It blew up the sprinkler controller and fried a phone and one other piece of equipment, but everything else appears to be in order. Nothing that a little money and an insurance claim can't fix. I'm just glad that I managed to dodge a lightning bolt for the second time in roughly 20 years. The bolt actually hit the roof about 12 feet directly above where I was sitting. I've got to find a way to stop attracting these things. I've got enough things to worry about in life without having to dodge lightning bolts.