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Have you ever had any bad experiences with lightning?

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Have you ever had any bad experiences with lightning?

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  1. Yes; one.

    At my first duty station, I was taking a night-time observation from the airfield. There were two things happening to cause this event:

    1. The Doppler radar RDA was not built far enough away from the airfield, which put our airfield in the "cone of silence", which meant we would not see all of the thunderstorm activity taking place directly over our airfield. This is dangerous, and it was a problem we battled with down there.

    2. On this particular night, a thunderstorm seemed to develop out of nowhere directly over the airfield. We knew however, that there were some isolated storms in the region.

    While taking an observation in the dark on the open tarmac, about 30 yards away from the safety of my building, I noticed the sky was glowing a deep red color from the reflection of local lights. I thought to myself that it looked mighty suspicious and very ominous. Before I could decide what I was looking at, and while feeling very wary to be standing below this thing unprotected, the lightning happened- a bright, PURPLE flash with immediate thunder. The LOUDEST THUNDER I HAVE EVER HEARD. It was more of a CRASH sound than anything. I was in the military and therefore had my hair fastened into a bun, and the bobby pins somehow attracted a portion of this lightning because I felt like something or somebody SMACKED my head when the lightning struck somewhere nearby. It was terrifying. Oh, that smell. That electric smell. Awful.

    It knocked me down onto the ground. As I scrambled up from the ground the rain began. That caused me to slip and fall and CRAWL my way back into the building. I trembled for a while but the wonderful part was I was required to take an observation because a thunderstorm began. But I wanted to go hide in a corner.

    When I tell people this story, I describe my close encounter with lightning like this: A purple flash with an electric smell, and it felt like opening an oven door because of the heat. The sound was louder than anything I've ever heard.

    They called me "lightning rod" at work for a while, but to me, it wasn't very funny. I am pretty sure I am lucky to have survived that.


  2. yes

  3. no

    .

  4. We were camping out at Cristoval River when a lighting storm came up fast. As we tried to get loaded up , the hair on our bodies stood straight up, a smell of electrical tape was in the air and a hugh pop hit the water not far from us . It was hard to hear for about 2 hours. Later I found we were very lucky to tell this story. Most people are struck. So I feel very blessed and take lighting very serious!

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