Sheer moment of Terror

The FRIED TV

Last night I had a moment of sheer Terror!

While we  were in the middle of our usual daily, rainy season thunder storm,
I was sitting on my bed, working on my laptop, minding my own business when I looked up and saw a bolt of lightening hit the tree about 5' from my upstairs balcony sliding doors.  It was so fast and so loud... then the fireworks started... the lightening hit the tree with the force of a bomb!
Sparks started coming out of the ground  into the sky, as tall as my two story house.... 

The tree only lost some bark but I'm not complaining.

 I Ran into the bathroom!

At first I was stunned not knowing what to do because the lights went out and the breaker switches all were blown... but then the electricity came on, one room at a time?
The cable was out along with the internet and my house phone...  So I called the local cable company.  "We will be out in the morning" was all they could tell me.


Well morning turned into noon.  As the cable guy went from room to room he saw that all the boxes connected to our tv's were blown as well... dead... their insides FRIED!   So he went to work trying to restore our service, especially the modem that is needed for my heart monitor. 
While he worked he told me of a home that was also hit in our town last night.  The house had a direct hit and every single piece of electrical was blown.. her 5 tv's, xbox, three pc's and all wiring both inside and outside the house.... even the box from the cable company that is installed on the side of her house melted down the wall.  A full days work, he told me, to fix her mess.. this woman had not one serge protector plugged into anything.. bet she gets some now!

We had our electric company install surge protectors quite a while ago. We learned our lesson a few years ago when we lost two pc's one night due to lightening.  

Florida has some serious lightening storms.

  Until the cable/electrical workers can get to our house in a few days they have us connected to a neighbors house with a really long extension cord.

I went out to assess the damage this morning.. nothing burned just one tree missing it's bark.  As long as it did not fall onto my house!  It was really interesting to actually see a bolt of lightening hit and how the sparks come out of the ground.  The noise was more of a clap, or crackle.  It's hard to describe just how loud this clap was!
You all know how street excitement go's when something happens like this.. when I told the neighbors that the lightening hit my tree no one would believe me, so I walked them to the back of my yard and their eyes were wide with wonder.  Wow, that sure was loud, was all most could mumble.

They just said on the weather report, "Thunder Storms this afternoon"

Oh Boy!