cheryl wrote:
>
>The power surges and spikes caused by thunderstorms
>are not necessarily limited to direct lightning strikes.
>Water can get into the neighborhood transformer, wet tree
>branches or bamboo can blow onto the lines shorting out
>the whole valley, and lightning+water in the transformer
>can cause it to explode. That's the green flash that lights
>up the whole valley prior to it going totally black.
>
>The power surges are spectacular during these events
>and its pry worse having transformers up the line
>malfunctioning during a thunderstorm (lots of spikes
>and erratic signals) than to have a lightning strike
>diretly to your home (which would pry just blow your
>household circuit's fuse and be done with it).
>
This is a very nice description. Under conditions Cheryl describes, I
would run a mile if there was a skinny Cat5 cable connected to my PC
next to my knee, and then strung across the valley.
For the exercise, it would be fun to ground(sic) the far end of the Cat5
cable and attach a multimeter to the near end (ground the other lead of
the multimeter.)
~1km
+------~-------[mm]---+
| |
//// ////
heh, watch the multimeter in a storm (wear safety glasses! remain well
clear!) Best would be an analogue type meter. betcha there would be
quite a few meter 'slams', and I would fully expect the meter to destroy
itself eventually. Be aware - this is roughly equivalent to flying a
kite in a storm, and an activity usually reserved for daft teenagers.
/sw
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