Next time, I hope we are just as lucky

Yesterday, around 3, the storm warnings started. "Severe weather is coming off the mountains.  Be prepared."  Yeah, whatever.  A storm coming off the mountains?  Hours and HOURS away - in fact, I don't think I've ever heard a warning like this - it's so far away as to be inconsequential. 

We did our normal stuff, including soccer practices, dinner and errand running, and got the little girls to bed.  I came back downstairs and couldn't find the Hubster anywhere. A quick search and he surfaced in the back yard, kicking soccer balls over to the side of the house and taking the canopy cover off the sand box.  When I asked him what was going on, he said, "There's a bad storm coming. Can't you hear the thunder?"

Yeah, I could.  As I stood there, I realized that the lightning was amazingly bright, with no delay between bursts.  The trees were bending nearly in half and the air had that funny ozone smell of an oncoming storm.  We barely finished the pick up and were just inside the door when the rains came down.  We looked at each other, faces illuminated by the lightning, and I realized that I'd need to turn off the computers. 

The lightning continued, one flash after another, lighting up the house through the blinds and curtains.  The thunder boomed and the wind howled, and I was really stunned at the ferocity of this storm.  Computers off and unplugged, I told the bigger kids to go to bed and after a brief skirmish, we let the middle ones lay on the downstairs sofa while the big kids watched television with us.

Ka-BLAM!  We jumped as the loudest thunder I'd ever heard cracked, as loud as if it was inside the house.  Simultaneously, the entire downstairs was lit up like the fourth of July.  The house shook as if there was an earthquake.  Beep! Beep! Beep!  All of the smoke detectors in the house began to scream, and the kids flew off the sofas as The Hubster and I jumped up.  "We've been hit!" we both said to each other.  Weirdly, the alarms stopped after 30 seconds.  Grabbing a flashlight, he climbed up into the attic.  I checked on the little girls, who were still sleeping, and then looked out each window, peering through the rain to try and see if there was a visible, gaping hole where the bolt had struck. 

Nothing.  I could see nothing.  Yet, I knew we'd been hit.

The Hubster went through the entire attic and we both walked all around, but we could find no damage. One circuit had been tripped, and he reset it.  We stayed up until the storm was over, and, checking once more, we went to bed.  I was nervous, having seen numerous news reports of unsuspecting homeowners roasted in their beds by an unseen fire from a lightning strike.  We talked and assumed we'd dodged a bullet.  I finally succumbed to sleep and dreamt very weird, vivid dreams including the most random bunch of individuals.  (Inexplicably, in one dream, I was searching for my sports bra.)

I have WEIRD dreams.

Today, I went out to do errands.  (How do we have so many "errands"?)  I tried several times to call home but always, the phone went straight to voice mail.  When I returned home, I checked the phones, assuming that one must be off the hook.  Hmmm, all safely hung up, but none had a dial tone. The Hubster called the phone company on my cell, and after testing the phone the way they instructed, we determined that  one of the phones must be defective.

Long story short, after a bit of arguing, because MY way is always the right way to do things, and The Hubster is similarly affected, we discovered that one phone had been fried and the caller ID upstairs was shot.  Different floors, plugged into different outlets, with nothing else affected.  Both were apparently victims of the lightning.

Thank God it wasn't worse.  And now I get to go buy a new phone!

Comments

[Kamrin]

Whew! I am glad that you all are OK!

[Tracy]

That is such a scary thing! Our neighbor got hit by lightning a couple of years ago and their house did burn (immediately and in the daytime - nobody was in the house at the time - praise God). Ever since I've been less tolerant of thunderstorms.

I'm glad that it wasn't worse!

[Brandy]

That happened to us in July. Luckily we, too, were spared anything serious.
I'm glad you and your family are fine! And YAY! New phone!

[Loralee]

That sounds completely frightening. However, you do get a new phone. I wonder there is a way to attach a lightning rod to my crappy cell phone. Hmmm...

[Anna]

There are more storms tonight, they're going through Colorado right now. I hope your luck continues.

[Chris]

Yikes! I would have grabbed the kids and gone on the porch, until I was certain the house wasn't going to burn up. This reminds me that we need to think of earthquake plans.
Glad you are all fine!

[Kendra]

I miss thunderstorms....and rain for that matter!

Glad all is ok!

[Monica]

I don't know if I was hit by lightning or what, but when I was a teenager my sister and I were driving my old '67 VW Beetle home from church. It was storming so bad that I could only drive because I could see the lines on the road and knew to stay within them. As we got close to home we drove on a long flat stretch between some farms (flat fields) and the lightning was hitting all over the place, on the road in front of us, a tree in the field, etc...and suddenly everything kind of stopped and our vision turned red, blue, and then went back to black. We couldn't hear anything but we were both screaming.

To this day I still don't know if we were hit by lightning or what, but it scared the crap out of us.

[jackie]

My grandparents house burned down because lightning hit some telephone lines and ran in on their house. They were asleep but luckily a family friend had been driving by and saw their house on fire and got them out. Two of the neighbors houses also had fires around the telephone jacks. Glad it was just a close call for you, someone somewhere was watching out for you.

[Kerry]

We've been struck twice. Once I lost a computer and another time a tv. The first time was kind of funny because I was on the beach with my sister and she got a call on her cell that a house in our town was on fire. When we got more info we realized that it was MY HOUSE! My husband was home at the time but he was unharmed and the house suffered only minor damage.

[Not The Mama]

Wow. I'm so glad you're okay. Our house was struck my lightening a couple of times when I was growing up. All but once it was small damages like this. One time is fried the well pump and we were without water until my poor parents paid a gazillion dollars to replace it.

[Katie]

Whew, I'm glad it was just the phone line! Lightening fried my parent's answering machine once too.

[Paige]

Riveting story. No other damage? Just that phone. I'm so glad it wasn't worse. And I can't believe the little girls could sleep through that!

[Heather]

Whew! I'm glad it wasn't worse, too! We were nervous during that storm, too. I couldn't believe that my kids slept right through it!

[Grace]

So glad that there was no damage. How unsettling! I'd have weird dreams too if that happened to our house. Whew!

[Heather]

I'm glad everyone is OK. My parents house was struck several years ago - and they learned the hard way that the house was not properly grounded!
Luckily, the only victims were the TV, laptop and wireless router.

[FishyGirl]

So glad you are all okay, and that the phone took the worst of it. Once when BigDaddyFish and I were driving in SC lightning struck the road right in front of the car and we drove through the energy field? for lack of a better word. All of our hair stood straight up and and BDF, who had his arm out the window, got a minor shock that left him with a metallic taste in his mouth and slight numbness in his arm for a couple of days. Ever since then, I never take a storm lightly. Glad you're all okay.

[mbbored]

While on vacation earlier this summer, my BF and I took a ferry boat out to an uninhabited island (really, just a 7 mile long sand dune, no trees, just scrub) under clear skies. 20 minutes later, we could see lightning hitting the water nearby. 5 minutes later the skies fell open. I FELT a big crack, and went into the lightning crouch, and my whole body, particularly my feet, felt like one giant static shock. No side effects, besides being completely and utterly freaked out.

[Jenny]

Whoa! That is totally scary, Carmen! I'm so glad that everyone is okay.

[Sasha]

OMG! I just read your post this morning and we had a major storm: lightning, hail, you name it this afternoon.

I heard a loud crack and like you described our smoke alarms went off. I jumped up and I was like "We've been hit! I read it on a blog today. She said that's exactly what happened."

My hubby who is a quad in an electric chair told me he got a shock through his chair!

Craziness! And yes, a LOT of luck.

[Elizabeth]

We live in an area with a lot of lightening storms. We had a whole-house surge protector installed on our electrical panel last year after two houses on our cul-de-sac suffered lightning strikes. Scary!

[Jenna]

Man, lightning can be scary. We lost a water heater when I was in high school. Only thing in the house that fried (and then flooded... joy...). Strange, strange.

[Daisy]

One year ago we went through the same thing. Our computer was okay, we didn't lose power, but it fried our telephone line, modem, and (expensive) braille embosser. It hurts to even think of the recovery process. I'm glad your losses were minimal!

[amanda]

I naively underestimate the ocean and nature. A little bit of fear is a good thing. Glad you are all safe and immensely jealous about the new phone!

[Natalie]

I had a friend in school whose phone was hit by lightning about 6 times during the years we were in middle and high school.

I'm glad that's all the damage you had!