[TheForge] Weathervanes and Lightening

[Larry and Pat Brown]

I had read somewhere that the rods bleed off the electric field surrounding 
them encouraging the lightning to hit other objects. I guess it would make 
your building look like it wasn't there and hit the tree further away.

  Either way if it hits its powerful. It hit the tree a few feet from the 
front door (large oak) years ago, blew out my ceiling lights, tripped the 
breakers and several wall receptacles stayed shorted and had to be thrown out.

  My wife was on the phone, she screamed in pain saying she got a shock to 
her ear. A few months later she had pretty much lost the hearing in the 
ear. An ear surgeon who operated felt that the stirrup bone probably become 
damaged, but he said the lightning couldn't have done it. During the 
operation he discovered that the anvil bone in her ear had disintegrated 
and he made a new one from cartilage from her other ear. She now has about 
90% in that ear. He said it was an infection. We still think it was the 
lightning.
L Brown


At 09:14 PM 1/30/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>The only place I seem to see them on new installs is in locations where 
>the likelihood of a strike is great in any case, church steeples and the 
>like. The one installer that I talked to made a big deal of the cable 
>being heavy enough to transmit the charge without causing a fire from 
>overheating. Might have been a sales hype for all I know , but it sounds 
>reasonable.
>
>Mike Graf
>
>pitbull wrote:
>
>>That was the thought back when lightning rods were sold, however they
>>determined that it actually made the likelihood of a strike greater and
>>caused numerous fires. That's why lightning rods where basically removed
>>from the market.
>>Rick