Thunder, Lightning and your audio system

[cjf]

Hello,

 

I was curious to know what the majority of folks do when they have a thunder storm brewing over there area while in the middle of a jam session. Do you shut down your setup or do you soldier on thru the storm and continue enjoying the music?

 

I was always kind of curious to know if you take two homes next to each other, one that has a big amp and high end system playing and the other home having an off the shelf Best Buy special playing during a thunder storm which one would be a bigger target.

 

Does a house that draws more power from the Pole provided by your electric company make for a bigger target and results in being more likely to be struck by a lightning bolt more so than a home drawing an average amount of power?

 

My theory on it is that it makes no difference so I just keep on listening and hope for the best. I understand that mother nature can be a powerful b1tch and a lighting strike can hold an enormous amount of electrical power that can turn even the most sophisticated power conditioning setup into a smoking pile of dung but I feel we are no more susceptible than the next guy in this situation and it's nothing more than bad luck if you get hit and it melts your equipment.

 

Not sure if there are any electrical engineers or astronomer's on the forum that can offer a technical answer on this but in any case I'm curious to know what folks do in this situation.

 

Thanks

[cjf]

Thanks for everyone's insight on this topic.

 

Ok so my house has an unused metal antenna on the roof which leads to a steel dow rod that is hammered into the ground. From what I can tell I have no wires from the antenna leading into the house. Not sure if that Dow rod is shared with the internal electrical system as a common ground though.

 

So I'm wondering if having a metal antenna on the roof is more beneficial than some would think if it has no connection points into the homes electrical system. My thought is that maybe it could be considered a sort of "Decoy" from lightning strikes to direct them straight to ground and away from the house itself?

[cjf]

And there is always the annoying chance of just a monster electrical event happening anyway - lightening has struck close enough to electrify everything, including making every hair on my head stand straight out and produce a scary as hell low frequency hum that vibrated the very air in the house.

-Paul

 

Sorry to hear, but I must admit the picture that pop'ed in my head after reading this kept me entertained for quite a while..Thanks

[cjf]

I wanted to thank everyone for posting their experiences in these situations as I have always been curious what the rest of the world does when this annoying problem occurs.

 

I just had a very nasty lighting storm occur last week that caused enough of a concern for me to pull the plugs from the wall for the first time in a long time. Interestingly enough, the moment the prongs of the power cord left the wall socket I had an event occur that blew out a circuit breaker in the house which powered the lights in the room I was standing in. It happened to be the only room in the house which had the lights on at the moment of the event. All other circuits in the house remained fine.

 

So it seems that lighting is definetely more attracted to circuits pulling active power over others thus leading me to believe a high powered amp which is turned on durng a storm could have the potential for beng a very big bullseye. No thank you, looks like I'm going to be shutting down from this point forward.