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Very very frightening; me!

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    Very very frightening; me!

    As I type this there's just been a FLASH!...1...2...3...4...5.BANG!RUMBLERUMBLE of an electrical storm about 1 mile away. The weird thing is that electrical storms are almost always exactly about 1 mile away from me. Unless they're hundreds of miles away, obviously, but you know what I mean.

    Only once ever have I been closer than that and that was in Bucharest the night of the total eclipse in '99 (there was one small cloud in the Bucharest sky as totality hit - guess where it was relative to us and the sun/moon). Having been underwhelmed by the experience of the eclipse I was shown natures true mighty might when the mother of all storms broke directly overhead. I got woken up by the noise (n.b. I am a heavy sleeper and slept through the demolition of our garden gate directly below my bedroom window in teh 87 hurricane) and went to have a look at the flashing and a listen to the banging. As I opened the balcony door the block next to ours got hit by lightning and it was honestly the closest I have ever come to shitting myself since I was about 6 years old.

    Oh, and I'd always thought you wouldn't hear lightning if it struck that close as all the sounds waves would be going away from you. What a load of cock. Mind-biggeringly loud, that's how loud it was.

    What's the closest you've ever come to being struck by lightning?

    #2
    Very very frightening; me!

    Never heard a thing here.

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      #3
      Very very frightening; me!

      Apparently a TV I used to have was struck, according to the person who tried to repair it. I don't recall hearing anything, or even being aware that it happened. Maybe he was just trying to sell me a new TV.

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        #4
        Very very frightening; me!

        Just started raining heavily here, so I guess we've got it to come.

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          #5
          Very very frightening; me!

          Heard it here earlier.

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            #6
            Very very frightening; me!

            When I was at junior school - I must have been about eight or nine - a thunderstorm started while we were out in the playground. There was some rumbling going on, so the teachers sent us indoors.

            All of a sudden, the whole sky turned white and there was a simultaneous ear-splitting crack. It frightened the life of me and I scuttled indoors as fast as I could.

            When I got in, some of the kids who had been inside the classroom looking out of the window said they had seen the lightning pass right in front of me. A close shave, that.

            My dad reckons he once saw ball lightning follow the bus that he was on up the high street.

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              #7
              Very very frightening; me!

              Once at my mum's I was in the living room, with a big thunderstorm raging outside. I was looking outside the window when I saw what looked like 3/4 white balls flash by then followed by an almighty explosion. I went on the balcony to take a look, daringly I might add and a tree in the patch of grass between my mum's block of flats and the one in front was smouldering.

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                #8
                Very very frightening; me!

                Wife and I were near a iron bridge during thunderstorm - watched over her shoulder and saw a spark cross two girders and a millionth of a second later a deafenting clap of thunder scared the crap out of us. Knocked out all the nearby stores power for a couple of hours.

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                  #9
                  Very very frightening; me!

                  Had a couple here this morning - one at 8:00 (it woke me up ...but not for long) and one about 10:00, I think. No particularly close lightning strikes. (Still, I went downstairs and completely disconnected the computer, just in case.)

                  The phenomenon of them always seeming the same distance away may be down to the geography, PG. (Although this is a guess.) Sometimes, you see, I've been on the train up to London and I've looked out of the window to what must be the South-West and I've seen shower clouds seemingly queueing up to hit London, but all in a row. I'm guessing they are getting funnelled by a river valley, or something. (OTF's amateur meteorologists - is this possible?) I've noticed similar down here, with storms seeming to move up the Wey valley from Alton, over us and then on to Guildford.

                  The nearest I've been to a lightning strike is, technically speaking probably less than 50 feet. Basically, the library where I work is on the top floor of a building on the top of a hill in Guildford and the building got struck by lightning. The next year, the main building also took a direct strike just about 50 yards from our block. In each case, it's pretty much flash and crash simultaneously and all the lights and PCs go off too. Not so bad in the middle os a Summer day, which was when both of those took place, but I imagine it would be pretty scary in the winter months.

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                    #10
                    Very very frightening; me!

                    When I worked from home in a small village in Northamptonshire, the local church 50 yards from my house got clobbered by a huge bolt of lightning one summer. I was looking directly at it and I could see the jaggedness of it every time I blinked for hours afterwards.

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                      #11
                      Very very frightening; me!

                      A good thunderstorm at the end of a period of high pressure summer weather is one of the greatest cathartic experiences in life.

                      But, in answer to the question, I was in a plane flying over London that was hit by lightening. There was a loud crack and a blue flash that seemed to envelope the fuselage before finally earthing at the wing tips.

                      It was pretty fucking scary and although the pilot told us it was a common experience and happpens all the time the tone of his voice suggested otherwise to me.

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                        #12
                        Very very frightening; me!

                        This storm in Havana involved quite a lot of lightning, though mostly over the sea to the north.

                        The closest I've been to an actual strike was in primary school when, towards the end of the day, there was an almighty bang almost out of nowhere (it was a hot day near the start of summer and had just started to rain), and all the kids in the classroom next to ours ran out screaming. When we all went round to look after being let out, there was a massive black mark right down the middle of the window of their room.

                        In spite of said mark, and the fact that the glass was, on closer inspection, actually cracked, one girl's dad was standing with his arm round her, telling her to stop crying, 'because it's absolutely bloody miles away, innit?'

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                          #13
                          Very very frightening; me!

                          My dad always told me never to look at a lightning storm, because the flashes might make me blind (mind you, he said that about alot of things). Can they really?

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                            #14
                            Very very frightening; me!

                            A mate was climbing in the Lakes when a thunderstorm came right over him - he couldn't get off the rock face so he just flattened himself as much as possible against the rock.

                            He said he could hear static crawling all over him and the rock, the air was humming and all his hair was standing on end - but thankfully it passed over without earthing and he was able to finish the climb, with very wobbly legs.

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                              #15
                              Very very frightening; me!

                              My dad reckons he once saw ball lightning follow the bus that he was on up the high street
                              Is he sure it wasn't a Nova SRi with loads of spotlights?

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                                #16
                                Very very frightening; me!

                                The opening post probably indicates why I spent three hours sitting in a plane at Heathrow yesterday waiting for the bloody thing to take off...

                                I'm sure I've mentioned all the lightning stikes that I've seen on oldtf.

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                                  #17
                                  Very very frightening; me!



                                  That took me bloody loads of attempts.

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                                    #18
                                    Very very frightening; me!

                                    And did it make you blind?

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                                      #19
                                      Very very frightening; me!

                                      Nah. The wine was already doing that.

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