Back in 1992 I was standing inside one of those do-it-yourself car washes on Cahuenga in Hollywood when the building was struck by lightning. By far the loudest noise Iâve ever heard in my life.
When I was in high school, a health club about half a mile down the road got struck while we were in class, and it was the loudest thing we had ever heard, even being that far away. I canât imagine being inside the building!
I worked at the club, and when I went to work after school, there was a hole the size of a nickel burnt into one of the giant metal beams that curved off the front of the building over the pool. The beam was apparently filled with moths, as they were all over the deck area, totally dazed.
Are you sure that the lightning wasnât actually static electricity from the beating of the fuzzy wings of all those moths?
If I saw a close-up lightning strike, and then started squealing like a middle schooler, I would not post that video to Youtube. I would delete it so hard even the ârelated videosâ would get messed up.
A few months ago lightning hit a lightning rod on our neighbors building. Iâve never jumped out of bed quicker than that day. It was super cool that you could smell ozone afterwards, though. It smells like metal!
I think that rather than squealing like âa middle-schoolerâ, itâs squealing like âa human being who has nearly been struck by lightningâ. Honestly, you aspire to be a robot or something? Or you want the rest of us to think you are?
I think the projected aspiration is more âin-control manly man.â
Saw a grand old white pine split down the middle about 100 feet away when I was maybe 10 years old. Louder than anything, splinters and branches all over the place.
Donât know how far away it was as it was behind me, but I was on my way to a class in college and I felt the hair on my neck go up from the charge in the air another student dropped their umbrella from electrical shock and it was indeed LOUD.
I wasnât nearly struck by lightning, but on a hike in Philmont we saw a tree get completely exploded to matchwood by lightning across a field. I suppose if we crossed the field a little slower we might have been the ones struck, since we were all wearing metal-framed packs.
Thereâs no middle ground âmanly manâ and publicly posting videos of yourself screaming in terror? Decisions, decisions.
Did you get the âfzzzzzZZZZâ sound just before the strike?
I have a little history on metal structures in Lakeland, Florida (home of lightning strikes).
Crazily, in storms, you got used to lightning strikes. âfzzzZZZTTâ âbangâ
Crazily.
When I was in junior high (middle school), a transformer on top of a wooden utility pole behind our school was struck by lightening. It made a noise like really low frequency static electricity (really low-cycle sparks, deep) for about two or three hours until the utility company (PG&E - yay /s) did⌠something to make it stop (???).
It was incredibly loud - you could hear it all over the school (up to at least 200 yards away); indoors, outdoors, didnât matter. It freaked everyone out.
Didnât notice it, no. It was the self-serve type car wash, open-air, with cinderblock walls and a metal roof, kinda like this:
I was washing my newly-acquired '62 Buick Skylark, which had been parked so long by the previous owner that the rain made mud on the windshield, so I just needed to get it clean enough to drive. The rain was loud enough on the roof that I donât think I would have heard the fzzzzZZZZ if it was there.
I wound up in 2 buildings that got struck by lightning while on the same business trip. One was a terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, and the other a building in Norfolk VA. Both srikes were loud as hell.
Iâve never heard the buzzing sound either, but I have had a couple of spooky instances while out in the mountains where my companions and I had our hair start standing up from static charge.
I was almost struck while crossing an open field carrying an umbrella during a storm. It hit a metal post about 20â away. I was already nervous because of the dumb thing I knew I was doing, so it may have been âshockâ rather than literal electrical shock, but I never jumped so high in my life. Every muscle in my body contracted at once. It felt almost exactly like the time I stuck my finger into an empty 240V lightbulb socket. No buzzing or neck-hair effects immediately beforehand though.
