What A Storm!! - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

nate300d · #1 07-27-2007, 08:53 AM

What a night! We had a small, but very, very strong storm cell move through last night in the very northwest corner of Ohio. I had been outside roofing a shed that I am building and when I came inside about 7:30pm my older son was telling me about severe storm warnings on the TV. I rather ignored it as we have been in drought and every time there has been a 'chance' of rain nothing has come of it. My wife had been gone for the evening and about 9:00pm she arrived home. A few minutes after she pulled it the rain came down hard and there was a lot of lightening. She told that she would not tell me how fast she was driving her E300 to get home because she was in the beginning of this storm and had been listening to the weather band in the car telling of the severity. I went downstairs to disconnect our wireless internet connection. My younger son was downstairs playing video games and I told him that I was going to disconnect the internet line. He was starting to walk by me and BANG a bolt of lightning struck. When the bolt struck I had the cable to the internet connection in my hand. It was disconnected from the modem and I had a hold of the cable by the shielding, but that did not matter......I took a hard hit of lightning! My son said he saw an arc. I did not see anything. I just felt as much electricity run through my arm and chest as I would guess most people could take and still live.
After my 'enlightenment' I went upstairs to hear hail that sounded as if it was coming through the house. I turned on the front like to see the yard filling with hail no smaller that a marble and as big as a golf ball. An east wind was battering the hail at our front door. Man, what a sound! I could see the stress of the force on the door. I was expecting it to break open any moment. I have two cars in the garage and two cars and a truck parked outside. I imagined that what was outside now had dented bodies and broken glass.
After the storm I went outside with a flash light to find both of the cars with numerous light dents and all glass intact. (My neighbor has several cars outside and all of them lost their windshields.) The vinyl siding on the east side of the house is broken with scores of holes. Our garage door also faces the east side and it looks as if someone threw hundreds of rocks at it.
The crops around us are shredded. Trees and limbs blown down. I was on a stretch of road that has so many leaves on it that it was hard to find any pavement. The grass is beat down.
That was the evening of July 26, 2006 in Farmer, Ohio. This morning I am still a bit achy in my arms and chest.

Dee8go · #2 07-27-2007, 08:59 AM

I'm glad you're okay, Nate. I've heard of things like that happening, but fortunately never experienced it first-hand. It's disheartening to see one's cars beat up the way hail can do.

TX76513 · #3 07-27-2007, 09:12 AM

I am happy to hear you and your family are OK. But electrical shocks are nothing to fool around with they can change the rhythm of your heart - go see the Doc and get checked out.

GottaDiesel · #4 07-27-2007, 09:21 AM

Geesh! That is a horrid night. Good hear all are ok. Hang in there!

Pete

Mistress · #5 07-27-2007, 09:45 AM

Nate- Please see your doctor if you got struck by lightening and get a check up.

whunter · #6 07-27-2007, 02:26 PM

Please.
Be a good husband/Father...
Go see the doctor ASAP (Today), secondary damage can be life threatening.

Hatterasguy · #7 07-27-2007, 04:28 PM

Wow I'm glad to hear you are ok! There is a little excitment for the night!

You should go to a Dr and get checked out.

t walgamuth · #8 07-27-2007, 08:01 PM

Yikes!

Thanks for sharing.... an excellent description of the action.

Tom W

Dubyagee · #9 07-27-2007, 08:27 PM

Wow. I agree on the check up.

deerefanatic · #10 07-28-2007, 06:24 AM

ya, at least call the Doc.

My sis got hit by lighting to some degree, the Doc said that if she felt light headed, woozy, had a headache, or was short of breath within the next several days, to take her to emergency. Otherwise, she would be fine......

Never hurts to call your doctor at the least......

Mistress · #11 07-28-2007, 09:59 AM

did you go see the doctor yet?

nate300d · #12 07-28-2007, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mistress

did you go see the doctor yet?

I am planning on Monday. Part of my hesitation is that the local medical facility has quite a lackluster reputation. Also, my job really governs my life at times and right now that is the case. It can be a bummer, but the company that I work for treats me very well. So far only problem that I have noticed is that I can not sleep. I do not yawn, I do not feel dopey from fatigue; I just can not sleep. Since I woke up on Thursday morning I have slept no more than three hours and that was last night. I come so close to falling asleep, but then I always awaken.

I just got back from this event:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=186980
I went with a friend who is not part of this forum. I am glad that I went to the GTG and I did not have to drive. (went in my friend's 1960 190B

) I was not going to go to the GTG, but I wife told me that I was becoming a bit isolated. I read yesterday that isolation and lack of sleep are some of the things that people experience from electrical shocks.

mgburg · #13 07-28-2007, 10:01 PM

Nate300d:

I took 480V through the index and middle fingers on my right hand back in '82 (didn't remember touching the circuit and the landing...), but I had a hell of a welt on the back of my head, no movement of my right arm (hand worked worth a chit too) for over 4-1/2 hours and I still had to drive 2-1/2 hours back home (Fiat, 4spd, manual)...what a night...next morning, went to the doc...he ran a few tests, gave me a bottle of sedatives to relief the "stress" from the experience and usual "Dr. Prattle" crap about "Don't go doing that..."

Then, in '90, before the storm hit, a "leader" hit the tower site that my assistant (Jay) and I were at (the storm was over 20 miles west of us at that time), and I happened to have one hand on a microwave rack and I was standing on a 4" wide copper strap (rack grounding) - my assistant was on the phone to the station at the time...

All I remember was looking at him, not hearing anything and I was slowly starting to curl up and fold over...I was looking at my shoes when I started to hear Jay yelling at me, "ARE YOU OK? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

Apparently, while he was on the phone, that "leader" took the phone out and it also started disapating through any and all ground paths it could find...including me...I had on rubber-soled shoes (what good they did, I'm not sure...), but I still ended up with some of the "over-shoot" during the disapation...

Went to see the Dr. the next day. Same smart-ass lecture..."Don't do that." (Do they actually have a class that teaches Dr.s-to-be to actually say chit like that?

), a bottle of sedatives ("Your sleep patterns will be a little out of whack...this will slow you down, just enough, to allow everything to "sync" back up...")

Yeah, Nate300d, get to the Dr. and make sure you're in better condition now than then...since you had the shot accross your chest, not through your fingertips...they may want to run you on the stress-test treadmill...do it, if not for you, then for your family...

Good luck and be a little more paranoid with those weather reports...