SHOCKING
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moon phases � |
Summer has arrived. Complete with swarms of gnats that insist on investigating EVERY mucous membrane and basically making a sunny eighty degree day a screamfest and raging electrical storms that knock the power out for fifteen hours.
Yesterday was a day that seemed only warm but a bit humid. The report was a chance of T'storms in the afternoon but once the heat of the sun was gone a fair night. Well, at eight sharp ( A's bedtime, of course) the sky went dark and ominous with a sinister wall of cloud comming in over the mountain. A few grumbles of thunder let us know there was no way sleep was happening until the storm passed. Then as a book was being read a huge bang and tingling throughout the body sent shockwaves through A's bedroom. Those silly slippers with the red lights on top that flash at each six year old step flickered like mad when the bolt hit. They were innocently sitting under a chair next to the bed.
I went from window to window trying to see if there was any damage. It is hard to tell when the only light is the flashes of lightening. Nothing appeared harmed. The barn and sheds were sitting in the back being pelted by hailstones. The trees all appeared to be as tall as they were before Thor rode in out of the west. I assumed the lightening hit nearby but hadn't done any damage. No fire whistle went off. All seemed OK.
Since there was no way A was going to bed we watched the lightening streak down out of the sky from the back door. It forked and jumped from cloud to cloud. It left negative impressions of jagged lines on our wondering eyes. Then a beautiful pink bolt traveled from cloud to the earth and everything went black. The power tried to come back on in a few flickers and then we were truely in the dark.
The notion of going out in a ragging thunderstorm to start the generator was not a real comforting thought. Rainman did go out though since after a few minutes the storm seemed to be getting far enough away. Things queieted down pretty quickly from there and A. was able to go to bed. The power came back on at four-thrity this morning only to go back off by around seven.
When I went to the barn this morning I found out what had been going on out in the storm last night. The electrical outlet I had plugged the baby monitor into last night had a chunk blown out of the side of the box and the plug was laying onto of the hay bales under the outlet. There was not power to be had in the barn at all. Then things began to come clear. Before I had gone out I tried to run hot water to warm bottles for the kids but no water came out of the faucet. Then rainman announced that the well pump wasn't priming.
After accessing the damage and making some educated guesses it seems that lightening either hit the breaker boxes or the ground sending a charge through the electrical items that run through the ground. The barn wires run through a conduit underground from the house to the barn. The well pump is in the front yard in the other direction from the breaker boxes. The outlet in the barn was the end of the line so to speak in that direction. The well pump switch in the utility the end of the line in the other. Both the breaker for the barn and the well were tripped. How something didn't catch on fire I don't know. Especially in the barn with the outlet only about 10 inches from stacked hay bales. I imagine there must have been sparks.
written at 9:02 p.m.
2004-05-11
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