Morning all.
I'm on my weekend today. Sort of. Working two jobs, so I'm "bringing home the bacon" 7 days a week right now. Past two days I've already worked almost 30 hours. Today I'm helping the family move some gear over to the fairgrounds.
Sunday and Monday we had some impressive electrical storms. It was mostly one storm that covered the whole county, plus parts of a few others. We have almost 700 downstrikes from that storm, most of which are turning into small fires. I got to sit in my tower on the "hot seat," which is basically a footstool with telephone pole insulators on the feet. That was fun. No strikes on the tower, but the one was pretty close.
Del, the towers are all really well grounded. The tall one has multiple lightening rods on it too. I don't think it's actually taken a direct hit while manned. The tower I've been in for the past week is different. It was built in 1947 from wood. It has one lightening rod, but I don't know if that would help much, considering what a downstrike does to trees. I don't want to find out.
--TK