A Surge of Relief

We have had some nasty storms here lately. I have what I like to call "severe weather anxiety." It started with a childhood fear of tornadoes (there are like two a decade in Pittsburgh) that was exacerbated by a move to the great state of Nebraska. APY and I volunteered to do clean-up for a day when a small town near us was devastated by a tornado. That experience was so realistic; To see the firsthand devastation of a tornado makes you realize their awesome power. I remember standing in a woman's front yard and using my hands to dig up her kitchen spices that had been imbedded in the ground.

Then came the move to Illinois which has a surprisingly high number of tornado warnings, although there are definitely some years that are worse than others. We had only been living in our house a few months when it was struck by lightning in the middle of the night. Talk about traumatic. The sonic BOOM scarred me for life! We lost two televisions, our fax machine (no big whoop), our modem and a couple of phones. Our alarm system went crazy and half the lights in our house were out. After a couple of trips to therapy and a long coversation with a NOAA meteorologist, I can kind of keep my fear of lightning in check....most of the time. I consulted with an electrician and had a whole house surge protector installed on my circuit breaker. This stops a current from going through a circuit breaker (which it can do if it's strong enough) and traveling to the outlets and phone jacks throughout the house.

Yesterday afternoon we had a really bad storm. Rogers and Curious J happened to be visiting and APY sent us down to the basement just so I was nice and chilled out for our company. Good thing he did because there was some cloud-to-ground lightning that was really close. Later in the evening I was preparing for the next rounds of storms and I noticed our DSL was down, which was annoying. Then when I went to call Anne in a panic (which I always do during tornado sirens; I take them seriously) I noticed our land line was dead.

Fast forward to today. APY is mowing the lawn and our normally-silent neighbor flags him down to chat. Turns out he lost a couple of phones, a TV, and his garage door opener. Plus his sprinkler system had gone haywire (which explains why it was on during a downpour...). When the AT&T guy came today, he said lightning hit the box and traveled into our houses. This means my little surge protector worked!! It just paid for itself by saving all our electronics! The DSL and land lines were fried, and for some reason our modem was damaged, but the surge did not enter our house. And more importantly, I kept myself reasonably calm through another strike. It makes me feel stronger, as if I'm a survivor or something.

So if you are concerned about lightning strikes, or live next to a cornfield like we do, you may want to consider a whole house surge protector. Protecting the house from lightning was my personal project, and I was pleased that APY gave me props today for saving us some money.

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