Lightning Storm

Robert Treder · Post by **Robert Treder** » 2003-08-26 04:45am

There's a totally insane lightning storm going on outside. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is markedly lightning-free most of the time, but there it all is, just going crazy outside.

Usually, when we have lightning, it's accompanied by rain and cold weather. Right now, it's hot, and not raining a drop. Usually when we have lightning it's the kind where it just flashes in the clouds, but never arcs to the ground. Right now, it's arcing like crazy, with lots of awesome ones going to the ground. Usually when we have lightning, it's accompanied by thunder so much that the thunder is really the remarkable part of the phenomenon. Right now, I haven't heard or felt a single thunderclap. Not even a rumble.

So I guess what's so crazy about all this isn't that there's a lightning storm, but that there's one so uncharacteristic of the ones that we do get.

I'm not familiar with lightning, so is it normal to have lightning that you can't hear? I suppose it's just really far off, but I mean you can't hear anything. And it's flashing all around, not just in one direction (well, predominantly in the north, but there are southerly, westerly, and easterly flashes as well, and a few that seem close to overhead). Is it that I'm in a ring of unmoving, far away lightning, or is there a lightning phenomenon that doesn't include sound?

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2003-08-26 05:14am

Lightning always causes thunder, but if you're more than a few miles away, you might not hear any thunder. It is odd, however, that you've seen ground strikes, but not heard any thunder. Cloud-to-cloud lightning can often be several miles up in the atmosphere, making it hard to hear, but you should be hearing something if you're seeing groundstrikes. Weird.

Looking at your local wx radar, there's two distinct bands of rain/thunderstorms heading roughly SE. One band runs from north of Napa down to San Jose, the other from north of Sacramento down to Fresno. So, you've been inbetween the two bands of rain (and lightning) for some time, but given the SE movement of the western band, you should seem some rain quite soon.

Thunderfire · Post by **Thunderfire** » 2003-08-26 07:38am

Robert Treder wrote:There's a totally insane lightning storm going on outside. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is markedly lightning-free most of the time, but there it all is, just going crazy outside.

We had a similar lightning storm a few weeks ago. No rain and the temperature
went up from 29 to 36 degrees celsius. This happend around 11pm. Some lightning
and almost no thunder.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-08-26 11:55am

Did that happen this morning? I heard some noises but didnt actually wake up all the way. Im not too far from you. ( Im near the old Angews Hospital site. )

Anyway, the storm we had last week was wild. Lightning was hitting the hill tops in Dublin where I was. Like most Bay Area residents, I get all excited seeing lightning cause its so rare. ( once or twice a year tops ) The rain came down pretty hard that day. I had just finished helping a friend cleaning his rain gutters and whoosh down pour.

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2003-08-26 11:59am

Lightning rare? Holy crap, I guess the world doesn't revolve around Michigan after all. Hell, there was lightning outside this morning and--by law--our band teacher had to bring us inside instead of practicing our drill. Not that he couldn't have gotten away with it, but I don't find the idea of marching about with a ligntning rod glued to my face very comforting.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-08-26 01:17pm

Darth Garden Gnome wrote:Lightning rare? Holy crap, I guess the world doesn't revolve around Michigan after all. Hell, there was lightning outside this morning and--by law--our band teacher had to bring us inside instead of practicing our drill. Not that he couldn't have gotten away with it, but I don't find the idea of marching about with a ligntning rod glued to my face very comforting.

Yeah, rare enough that if a lightening storm visits our area, it makes the news. Not the weather news mind you, but opening stories.

Shadow WarChief · Post by **Shadow WarChief** » 2003-08-26 03:06pm

Lightning storm? What the hell? Up in here in San Francisco we didn't get a damn thing. *looks at Tredar's location* Ah.... Santa Clara. So it was roughly 45 miles south of SF then...

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2003-08-27 02:49am

They showed a clip on BBC America tonight of those storms in San Jose and wow! It was a really impressive lightning show. They said that something 3,000 people were without power, and a few fires were started by ground strikes. It looked like a lot of the strikes were up in the hills...bad night to be up on Mt. Diablo...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-08-27 02:55am

There was a lightning storm a few nights ago which was so powerful that it blew up an oil refinery as well as a sewage treatment plant.

I always know there's thunder even if I can't hear it, because my dog hears it long before I do, and he's terrified of thunder.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2003-08-27 03:35am

Darth Wong wrote:There was a lightning storm a few nights ago which was so powerful that it blew up an oil refinery as well as a sewage treatment plant.

I remember that thread. Lightning can do crazy shit. When I was in college, the house of one my friend's parents was struck by lightning and, among other things, it cracked their foundation. A poured foundation, with steel rebar in it. A crack big enough to stick your hand in.

And this spring, there was a storm here that struck a house that a carpenter was working on inside. The guy was hurt by the sheetrock the bolt blew off the walls. Blew the nails across the room like bullets. Crazy stuff.

Darth Wong wrote:I always know there's thunder even if I can't hear it, because my dog hears it long before I do, and he's terrified of thunder.

Yeah, we lost our first family dog due to his being so afraid of storms. We got him in California, where it almost never storms, but we later moved to Houston TX where it storms all spring and summer long. He got so scared one by night he dug out and went running around the neighborhood and got hit by a car

Robert Treder · Post by **Robert Treder** » 2003-08-27 03:51am

Yeah, the storm was this morning, technically. I was at work, closing the store at about 00:15, and my coworker, who was putting up the new releases for Tuesday, claimed to have seen a bolt of lightning. Since we rarely have lightning, and when we do, it usually doesn't show up as bolts, and we didn't hear anything, we concluded that it must have been something like power lines arcing or something.
A few minutes later, he saw it again, and called me over to the window. When we looked outside, the entire sky was lighting up with strike after strike. It totally kicked ass, and I wish I had my camera with me.
By the time I drove home, at 1:00, the lightning was still going strong, but there was still no rain or thunder.
At 3 or 4, it started thundering a lot, and then we had maybe a minute of extremely light rain.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-08-27 03:54am

It took out my internet and power last night.

greenmm · Post by **greenmm** » 2003-08-27 09:32am

Our storm is finally blowing through. The lightning started last night, and it pretty much stalled over Columbus until this morning.

The station I listen to in the morning was having so many lightning strikes near their building their generator was about ready to kick on, and the local meteorologists were joking about the storm being the "wrath of God".

We even had an accident on the freeway caused by a semi hit by lightning, if you can believe that...

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2003-08-27 10:25am

We had a lightning storm yesterday that was the opposite. At least at first. It was raining and windy as hell and you could hear thunder. But there were no lightning (which I didn't like. I'm a big "fan" of lightning

. Always looks so cool).

But you should never have your computer on and always pull out your modem from the jack when there is a lightning storm. The lightning stroke our old modem once and it got so screwed up that it blocked our phoneline if we connected it to the telephone jack. Even if the power was off. Weird.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-08-27 12:39pm

Drewcifer wrote:They showed a clip on BBC America tonight of those storms in San Jose and wow! It was a really impressive lightning show. They said that something 3,000 people were without power, and a few fires were started by ground strikes. It looked like a lot of the strikes were up in the hills...bad night to be up on Mt. Diablo...

This mornings San Jose Mercury news has a picture of the storm on the front cover. It shows lightning hitting the hills east of the airport.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-27 12:40pm

One lightning storm split a tree near in half in front of our house. Was a pain in the ass to cut it down.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2003-08-27 03:14pm

Crap, all we get here are a few lighning strikes per storm. It sucks.

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2003-08-27 05:44pm

Lemme see... I knew a guy who said that when he was in the armed forces, he saw a lightning bolt strike two men. One guy basically exploded while the second guy looked like he was compressed.

My grandfather's first wife (not my grandmother), was struck by lightning. When she was hit, she ran all over the house scorching the walls as she ran. Then she died.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-08-27 05:54pm

I live in the lightning capital of North America (Florida). My mother's been struck once (indirect ground strike), and there's generally a couple people who die each year of lightning strikes. Usually idiots who shelter under a tree. Around here, you get used to it after a while. I've gone walking around a lake during a hurricane, when the arms passed by and it was just windy. Made it halfway around, waited under an awning at the boat club, and walked the other mile and a half back to campus.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2003-08-27 09:16pm

The Dark wrote:I've gone walking around a lake during a hurricane, when the arms passed by and it was just windy. Made it halfway around, waited under an awning at the boat club, and walked the other mile and a half back to campus.

I walked my dog in a Tropical Storm. Fun times.

And you pansies! Come down to Tampa, Lightning Capital of the World! We get huge black clouds in the sky, lightning crashing, nobody even ducks on campus. We only ran when the rain opened up.

Speaking of which, fucking storm caught me in a damn parking lot. And Florida rain can't be all nice and vertical, it has to have an angle, so my shins and lower were totally drenched.

But such is life in the "Sunshine State".

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-08-27 09:18pm

Robert Treder wrote:There's a totally insane lightning storm going on outside. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is markedly lightning-free most of the time, but there it all is, just going crazy outside.

Usually, when we have lightning, it's accompanied by rain and cold weather. Right now, it's hot, and not raining a drop. Usually when we have lightning it's the kind where it just flashes in the clouds, but never arcs to the ground. Right now, it's arcing like crazy, with lots of awesome ones going to the ground. Usually when we have lightning, it's accompanied by thunder so much that the thunder is really the remarkable part of the phenomenon. Right now, I haven't heard or felt a single thunderclap. Not even a rumble.

So I guess what's so crazy about all this isn't that there's a lightning storm, but that there's one so uncharacteristic of the ones that we do get.

I'm not familiar with lightning, so is it normal to have lightning that you can't hear? I suppose it's just really far off, but I mean you can't hear anything. And it's flashing all around, not just in one direction (well, predominantly in the north, but there are southerly, westerly, and easterly flashes as well, and a few that seem close to overhead). Is it that I'm in a ring of unmoving, far away lightning, or is there a lightning phenomenon that doesn't include sound?

Well... where I grew up we had what was called "heat lightning". You'd see it flashing far off, usually over on the other side of the ridge, and never hear a whisper of thunder. I've never heard any of the old-timers explain why its' called 'heat lightning', but my personal experience has proved the tempertures are always high, with lots of humidity during these displays. I've rarely seen evidence of rain in the area where the 'heat lightning' seems to be centered.

Now, for a really weird question of my own: California had a small earthquake recently, yes? Could the lightning seen be discharges related to the shifts made by the earthquake?

Mitth`raw`nuruodo · Post by **Mitth`raw`nuruodo** » 2003-08-27 09:36pm

RogueIce wrote:
The Dark wrote:I've gone walking around a lake during a hurricane, when the arms passed by and it was just windy. Made it halfway around, waited under an awning at the boat club, and walked the other mile and a half back to campus.
I walked my dog in a Tropical Storm. Fun times.

And you pansies! Come down to Tampa, Lightning Capital of the World! We get huge black clouds in the sky, lightning crashing, nobody even ducks on campus. We only ran when the rain opened up.

Speaking of which, fucking storm caught me in a damn parking lot. And
Florida rain can't be all nice and vertical, it has to have an angle, so my shins and lower were totally drenched.

But such is life in the "Sunshine State".

Haha, I can confirm this. (Only difference is, when it rains, I don't even run. RI is a panzy, afraid of a little bit of water

) "Sunshine state" my ass, it rains, and rains, and rains here. It's like, as if we weren't already surrounded by water on 3 sides, we get it from above too. And then of course, the huge dark clouds (the best ones make it look like a starless night, when it's really only 4 PM) and lightning follow, fun for everyone! Well, except for all the people unlucky enough to get struck by lightning.

Everyone seems to be scared shitless of lightning here (fl), I dunno why. If it hits you, you're most likely dead. So what? If it happens, it happens. Being scared of it isn't going to help, it isn't going to stop the lightning bolt from hitting you because you don't want it to or anything. Bleh, use common sense, but don't go overboard (OMG A SMALL SHOWER! QUICK, GET IN THE COMPLETELY INSULATED SHELTER, THERE MIGHT BE LIGHTNING! *gasp*)

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-08-27 09:45pm

LadyTevar wrote: Now, for a really weird question of my own: California had a small earthquake recently, yes? Could the lightning seen be discharges related to the shifts made by the earthquake?

No, we have been getting weather patterns coming up from the south, which is not normal for our area. Thats the cause of the lightning. The Earthquake is just a coincidence.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2003-08-28 04:54am

LadyTevar wrote:...heat lightning...

People used to believe that lightning could be caused by heat and humidity alone, sort of a summer St. Elmo's Fire. In reality, people were seeing the lightning of a far off thunderstorm. A vigorous storm can top out at 70,000 feet (21336 m), which can be seen for miles and miles away, often far away from where the rain shaft is.

Darth Fanboy · Post by **Darth Fanboy** » 2003-08-28 05:10am

dude i saw pictures of that storm taken from Monterey, that is one cool looking display of nature.

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