Real Life Lightning Strike Map.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Interesting, real time lightning strikes maps.

http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime?lang=en

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Scroll the map across to Europe to see the lightning strikes in your part of the world.

[colly0410 1,181]

Cheers for the link John, it's in my bookmarks now..

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

I was watching a rather nasty storm yesterday, but like mosts storms heading my way, once they hit the Ozarks, they break up until they hit the Mississippi Valley and start to reform.

[mick2me 3,033]

You'd have thought they would have put Bills Mothers on it?

[mudgie49 401]

According to the weather folks here in Florida,we hold the record for lightning strikes.

I think that's because 'Bills' mother' retired to Florida

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Looks like you have a few going off right now @11-18CDT.

[colly0410 1,181]

According to the detector it's lightning over Kimberley way: & so it is.

[colly0410 1,181]

& now the flipping roads flooding, waters coming up the drains instead of down, always the same when we have heavy rain here..

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

There's a huge storm over France, from one end to the other..

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Heaviest rains I've ever seen in my life was in NSW on the coast, it's classed as semi tropical rainforest.

I was on my way to work down the Southern Freeway, just south of Wollongong, and it rained!! My windscreen wipers couldn't handle it, and they were on fast, I had to pull over to the hard shoulder, even semi trailer trucks had stopped. It was impossible to see to drive, the freeway was a parking lot until it eased off. Flooding was no problem, as storm drains are as common as much down under.

[colly0410 1,181]

Fascinating to see a flash & bang & then see it come up on the detector just at the back of our house. Yeah seen those over France, they seem to be getting it bad, wonder if they're coming this way? It doesn't show the cloud to cloud lightning though, but it tells that in the info gubbins..

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

We has three ground strikes here one evening a few weeks back, flash then a round of explosives at the same time, I looked around the following morning for scorched trees but found nothing.

Last tree I found that had been hit was near the chicken house, that was about ten years back, made the missus jump as it was about 100 feet away. Huge splinters all over the place, a tree limb about a foot diameter on the floor and a scorch line from top of the tree to the ground...

Must have frightened my chickens silly!

[colly0410 1,181]

you could have had ready cooked chickens John, lol.... There were a couple of nearby strikes at back of our house according to the detector & one over the aerodrome... The daft kids were filling buckets with flood water & chucking it over each other, the parents were laughing at them. I bet there was sewerage in it, I'd have gone mad if they my kids..

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

One of the reasons I won't go out in a storm, way too dangerous Steve.

A few years ago in Florida, a yard maintenance man was killed mowing a lawn, he struck by lightning..Irony was, the sky was clear!!! The lightning storm was ten miles away!! Sounds incredible, but apparently it's not as unusual as it sounds according to meteorologists.

Living with so many trees around me, makes me extra cautious.

[colly0410 1,181]

I've seen those 'bolts from the blue' talked about on documentaries, there's some speculation that they are positive lightning instead of the more normal negative sort, also said it could be the cause of sprites. Fascinating subject. (for nerds like me at least) Don't blame you on being careful with all those trees about, they drilled into us in the army 'you don't need a direct strike to harm you, side flashes & ground currents can get you as well'...

[darkazana 1,736]

Best thing to do if caught outside in lightning, apparently is to curl up on the ground with your bum in the air, less likely to be harmed if struck.....will be laughing stock though!

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

There's been some interesting problems in coal mines caused by lightning Steve, some were scoffed at at first. Mostly because of the depth, but after further analysis proven to be true..Like a US colliery that had an ignition of gas that killed a few miners. Over 1000 feet deep, but a lightning strike actually discharged from a roofbolt igniting methane in the roof.

In Australia, it's now required to ground drift conveyors throughout their length and connect to the mines main earthing system.

Darkanza, makes sense to reduce your height by squatting or laying flat on the ground, but I'd be the unlucky mug who took a direct hit if I was outside....LOL

When I'm out on the tractor mowing, I wear hearing protection, so no chance of hearing distant thunder, so when I know a storm is due, I keep one eye on the clouds and one on what I'm doing. I'f I suspect one is getting near by the cloud formations, I shut the engine down and take a listen.

We can get some horrendous storms around here, very dangerous storms, many houses have lightning protection on their roofs.

[firbeck 860]

Thanks for putting me on to the lightning map, I was sitting in the hire centre watching the progress of Bertha on it from Oxford travelling east getting ever closer to Braintree. By about 3:00pm the sky looked like a scene from 'Independance Day', even a small twister started to come down from the cloud, but this dissipated. It was quite strange to have the thunder and lightning go off overhead then watch it come up on the computer screen exactly over Notley Park a few seconds later, how do they do it.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Magic Pete, magic.....LOL

[Smiffy49 590]

I wish I had spotted this post earlier !

We had an almighty thunder storm in our area last week, the worst I have seen for years.

It had been raining for most of the day but during the afternoon the sky blackened and it came down in stair rod fashion.

About 3pm there was a very loud crack and a bright flash that lit up the whole place.

All of the lights went out followed by another bang and flash that seemed to wrap itself around the house.

I waited a good 15 minutes for it to pass over and then flicked the circuit breaker back on, luckily all lights and sockets were unscathed.

I picked up the phone to call our neighbour down the road, but the line was dead.

Doing a quick check throughout the house I found that the lightning had taken out the phone, TV, Satellite Dish & Box and my PC.

All of these were beyond repair we found out later. Another quick look outside showed no structural damage so some luck at least.

The air had a strange burnt out electric motor sort of smell to it, uncanny.....

I went down to my neighbours house to make sure they were alright, they had been hiding under the kitchen table too afraid to come out!

They told me that they had been watching the darkening clouds from an upstairs window.

Suddenly without warning the lightning flashed horizontally across the fields and hit a metal line post in our garden and deflected onto the roof area.

He tried to ring us but his phone was down too. He did a similar check to me and found the same damage, phone, TV, PC etc.

A very lucky escape.

Smiffy

[colly0410 1,181]

Re # 21,

Glad you're OK Smithy, hope insurance covers the TV,PC ect. I remember that burnt out electric smell when lightning struck the flag pole on the pit head baths at Bestwood pit, I lived just across the road, I nearly jumped out of my skin..

[Beduth 202]

Yes, a 'brilliant' website. I've had it in my favourites for a few months now.

Another site some of you may not be aware of but may find of interest is ; http://www.flightradar24.com/ It identifies many commercial flights on their paths and gives info. on flight number; plane model; ETA; destination.

[mick2me 3,033]

I actually have a device which pics up flight data broadcast from aircraft within range and transmits it to flightradar over the net for rebroadcast. That's how the system works thousands of receiving stations around the world.

DVB-T + DAB + FM Radio Realtek RTL2832U R820T software defined SDR HDTV Top

[firbeck 860]

The smell you experience is ozone, the high temperature of the lightning converts the oxygen in the air to it somehow by altering the atoms, well, something like that, I'm not much of a chemist.

Good luck with the insurance claim, they'll call it an 'Act of God' and refuse to pay up, they did with me. I experienced a bad storm a few years ago while on the Internet, we didn't get struck but the lightning pulse caused my PC to go bonkers, the screen image afterwards was a kind of surreal negative and nothing worked properly. I phoned the insurance company who claimed the 'Act of God' nonsense and said they'd only pay up if it was a true accident like dropping it, like you do regularly with a PC of course. I said, OK, I'll throw it down the stairs and you'll pay up then, they replied if I tried that they'd do me for making a false claim, you can't win with these people. It didn't matter in the end, we were due to obtain another computer anyway, the pocket money would have been handy though.