Posted on 05/06/2005 8:50:15 AM PDT by OXENinFLA
A rock chip this isn't! How about a lightning bolt! It's what's left of a Salt Lake woman's windshield after lightning struck as she was driving down a highway.
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If the chances of getting struck by lightning are slim, then getting hit two times should be near impossible. That means Aline Devaud of Millcreek shouldn't ever have to worry about it again. As if Mother Nature hasn't done enough to Utah this year, now she's picking on people.
Aline Devaud: “Pretty amazing, but I’m lucky.”
Lucky because Aline Devaud was driving her car when a big bolt of lightning came through the top.
Aline Devaud: “I thought the tire had blown out. My car was just in the shop yesterday, so I thought, ‘those darn mechanics. What did they do wrong?’ (laughs).” Lightning Victim
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Jay Watkins, Utah Highway Patrol: “I can’t believe it. Absolutely, I’m still amazed by it.”
Shirley Ayrton is amazed too.
Shirley Ayrton, Lightning Victim: “Definitely the loudest thing I’ve ever experienced.
Lightning came down the chimney of her South Jordan home and ripped apart some tiles.
Shirley Ayrton: “I was amazed. I just didn’t think lightning would travel down a chimney and come into your home.”
Yeah, lightning can do that, and as we saw, it can come through a moving car too. Fortunately, both victims are okay, shaken up but okay.
Gotta see this pic ping....
Well, there goes the myth that you are safe from lightening in a car...
Wow! Set off the air-bag too!
I wouldn't think this was possible. The car should be insulated from the ground by the tires.
Not one of ours, honest.
Wow!
A few years back, a family driving down a local road here suffered a direct hit on their car by a lightening bolt. Blew out all four tires, fried the electrical system and scared the crap out of the poor folks inside. Fortunately, all survived. Scary stuff.
But I think Faraday saved our bacon that day.
I vouch for that! ;)
ROFL!
I am glad to hear it was not an errant ZOT!!
This lightning stuff is obviously dangerous and must be banned for the sake of the children.
I think Kalifornia should be the first to ban that health hazard.
WOW!
This woman should go buy a lottery ticket.
Air is more or less as good of an insulator as a tire's rubber. And lightning travels through air.
Who can she sue? Someone has got to be sued here.
I'm picturing being under attack by a squad of engineers armed with aluminum parts...
determined to lighten your car!
LOL!
She's alive, isn't she? The reason your're relatively safe is that if you get hit the charge will go through the car and into the ground rather than through you -- unless you like touching metal parts of your car as you drive.
Put car up for bid on ebay.
To a degree, but, even airborne airliners and rockets a mile up can get hit by lightning. The metal of the vehicle forms a kind of faraday cage that keeps most of the charge outside, so you would be safe inside. Your vehicle does have a metal body, doesn't it?
Heck take credit for it it was a good one!
you broke the car...
I wonder if conductivity can happen in (extremely heavy?) rain. Water being a conductor, of course...
Still, it seems like a lot of conditions would have to be right for a car to be struck by lightning, which brings me to the subject of Divine intervention.
(Einstein ping.)
Nope, wasn't me either :-)
Gotta love the caption of breaking news in the pics there.
The lightning just burned its way through 5+ miles of atmosphere. A rubber tire wouldn't even register.
I'm picturing being under attack by a squad of engineers armed with aluminum parts...
determined to lighten your car!
LOL!
Trust me, you want your tires to be conductive to some degree. So too does the electronics controls in your car.
Glock did it!!!
I once saw lightning hit an electrical transformer right across the street from me. That thing arc'd like crazy for about 3 seconds. I'm a welded for a living and it was just like looking into a welding flash. I could still see it in my eyes for a couple of minutes after it happened.
Mr G had a cousin who was an airline pilot. He told of a ball of lightning that hit the front of the plane and rolled like a ball down the aisle and out the back. Everything was OK.
We, on the other hand, had our office hit by lightning. Took out 9 computers and lots of other audio stuff. What a pain.
I suppose her On Star doesn't work anymore huh?
WoW!! .. twice hit by lightening???
Electricity will "jump" ask any Electrician that has serviced HT lines. It can "jump" like 5', just like a giant spark plug gap.
These days with metal coatings on windows, things like this will become more common. In the old days, with a plain glass windshield, the lightning would have gone between the cloud and body, or the body and the cloud (it can actually go either way). I wonder if auto companies have ever lighting tested their cars? Seriously ....
The lightning hit her because of her Motorola cell phone battery, which was in her car charger at the time. Anyone hit by lightning needs to be compensated by cell phone companies.......:)
“I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me. You can’t prove anything.”
She must have been listening to Air America.
All of this information is very interesting. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hide under the bed.
My wife had a Land Rover four years ago that was hit by lightning in front of our house during the night. The bolt and boom was so close to the house you could feel the house shake. The whole electrical system was fried. Good thing it was still under warranty as the repairs came to over $20,000 to have the whole vehicle rewired.
When we had it towed to the dealer for service the service manager said you are nuts, lightning does not hit cars and if it did there would be some type of mark on the vehicle.
There were no marks we could see at the time, but a few weeks after getting it repaired, while washing it we noticed a hole in the rain gutter of the roof, it was smaller than the size of a pea and looked like it had been burned through with a blow torch.
Will you guyz pleaze pleaze use better zot control!
Before you know it zoteration will require a zafety courze complete with licenzing feez!
Actually this helps proves it. The lightning struck her car but she was unharmed.
Pure (rain) water doesn't conduct electricity very well. It needs impurities like an acid or a salt, which cause the H20 molecules to break into H30 and single oxygen ions. Then it conducts electricity just fine. I suppose if the car has enough of the right kind of crap of it that could happen.
Ball lightning is an unusual event, some 30 years ago when I was a teenager, my neighbor was sitting inside his house with the front door open during a thunderstorm, he said he watched as a bolt of lightning hit the ground outside, and rolled in a ball right inside the house and hit him in the chair. There were burn marks on the floor in the shape of his shoes where his feet had been. He was never quite the same after that event.
They are both very lucky they weren't killed. Two years ago, lightening hit my house 3 times in the same place. It fried all of my electronics, phones, jacks, TV, VCR/DVD etc. I actually saw lightening arc through my dining room window. Then I found out my house is not grounded. Suffice to say it was a very frightening experience.
One day I was tired of turning everything off just to adjust it and hope for the result I wanted so I figured it was easier to adjust it while ignited. What I failed to identify was that the terminals on the high voltage igniter were not shielded or covered. I was crouched down, wearing a big gold school ring, and the igniter fired to spark the oil vapors and my hands were still a good foot away from the burner when the igniter voltage reversed direction from inside the burner to my hand with the ring. It must have made the muscles in my legs flex, and I found myself all the way accross the basement under a workbench table in a daze. I couldn't move my arm for a few days.
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