Lightning Strikes

I mentioned the roof at American Family Field leaking during the Brewer game in Milwaukee on 2025-08-09:

https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/08/two-highlight-videos.html 

There were storms here on the island on that Saturday, too.  The power was out for about 1/2 hour in the late afternoon.  But before that there was a very close lightning strike near my house, flash and thunder at the same time and LOUD !  Luckily I had turned off the modem, computer, disconnected antennas and the phone line.

But after the power came on I didn't check the outside and garage lights.  There is a long buried wire from the garage to a lamp near the mailbox.  It's on a ground fault circuit which usually trips during a storm.  But trying the lights a few evenings later (after resetting the GFI breaker) the lights were found to be dead.   The next day I checked and found these 4 dead LED bulbs:

The three LED lamps on the left had been outside and they all rattle just like a burnt out incandescent bulb !  The fourth LED didn't rattle but it was on the same circuit in the garage.  They were all switched off during the storm but the induced field must have been strong enough to arc over.  

So now in addition to disconnecting the phone line and powering stuff off when a storm approaches I'll also flip that GFI breaker.  It might or might not help but it's an easy thing to do.

It makes me wonder about the effects of an EMP.  If the bad guys ever drop the big one the least important result may be that the survivors (if any) won't have working LED lamps.  Of course the DoD has already done a study comparing EMP and lightning:

 

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA154325.pdf  

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm