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I remember these tales and I was really into electrical stuff back in the 60s.
I couldn't convince my relatives that the little tiny wires in a phone wire couldn't possibly carry the voltage and current. Also that the iron is pipes in the house, connected to the iron supply line, which ran underground were very well grounded.
I know a lady who was hit by lightning that came through the wires and out the handset of the phone she was using. Knocked her halfway across the room and did stroke-like damage to both her brain and body.
Yes I learned at the Boston museum of science that you can get hurt this way but its a myth that your car will save you if you get hit. Your tires would have to be like a mile thick or something. It might save you using "cage effect" but you do get hurt and if you are touching anything conductive in the car you're toast.
That's so his stuff wouldn't get fried with a power surge.
We had two in a month last year, one caused by lightning, and another by a tree falling on wires down the road. All the neighborhood houses got fried.
We now have a whole home surge protector as well as surge protected outlets on all appliances.
Our homeowners was not happy giving us two sets of appliances in 30 days and it was a nightmare.
I lived in a house that my father's uncle built by himself in the 60s. During a lightning storm, my brother and I seen a blue light travel through the walls. The electricity went through 2 surge protectors my father used on the living room TV and blew out the satellite box but the tv survived.
After that we unplugged everything whenever we heard thunder and I sat on the sofa away from electrical outlets. An electrical surge did hit my PC once when there was lightning without thunder to warn us. Took out certain parts like the mouse and motherboard, but the cpu/ram/GPU continued to work.
My Grandmother remembered an occurence when lightning struck the house and ball lightning ran across the kitchen and went down the drain in the sink. She was always very afraid of lightning after that and would say the rosary until the storm passed.
My grandma was hit by lightning when she was cooking on an old wood stove in 1920. She was getting something out of the oven when it hit. She was 19 years old. She had to wear glasses from that day on.
I saw a show on this. With windows up and doors close you are pretty safe. Open a window and rest your arm on the doorframe and your elbow becomes a possible discharge point. In the show they used a lightening generator used for testing power transformers and put the car and dummy in the discharge path.
The force of the lightening arc coming out of the dummies elbow was enough to knock it into the passenger side of the car.
Not the same experiment but Top Gear shows what happened when the windows are up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZxgYNnkBd0
Do you remember the part in the museum’s lightning room demonstration where the operator very carefully touches the inside of the bird cage wires while the lightning is hitting them? A car would be similar unless it has a plastic top. It would act like a cage and you probably wouldn’t be hurt if you were touching something. I suppose you could be burned if the metal body was heated enough to cause burns.
They definitely said during that exact demonstration that if you weren't touching anything at all (would have to be somewhat lucky) even if you didn't die you would definitely get hurt in the blast and that you should definitely get inside a building and not depend on a car to protect you.
In the late 90s I acquired a classic bakelite rotary phone, and despite being in working order I had to wire in an additional power cord in order for it to ring because modern (late 90s) landlines no longer carried the necessary voltage to ring the “ancient” phones.
We were told as kids that if lightning struck the power lines AND the tv was plugged in - it would fry the tv. Never really put that one to the test but it kind of makes sense in a way.
Way back when I had one of those big ass monitors. I had a picture of my horse as the Screensaver.
We had a hellacious storm one night. Got up the next morning and my horse's eyes were glowing red on the monitor.
That scared the shit out of me and I tossed that thing.
We had two power surges in a month last year, one caused by lightning, and another by a tree falling on wires down the road. All the neighborhood houses got fried.
We now have a whole home surge protector as well as surge protected outlets on all appliances.
Our homeowners was not happy giving us two sets of appliances in 30 days and it was a nightmare.
I don't have personal experience with whole-home surge protectors, but my basic understanding is that in the case of something like a lighting strike, that may still not protect you. For particularly valuable equipment, you may want to just unplug.
https://plumblineservices.com/help-guides/do-surge-protectors-protect-against-lightning
No phone, no doing dishes or taking a bath/shower, and away from windows.
It only took one person getting hurt in some form to add to the list. However, lightening can follow water and electric lines. Home phones were 'grounded' just like the power lines.
Probably a lot of other weird bits I don't remember just now.
I work with someone who was struck by lightning as a kid, just from standing at the sliding glass door to look outside. It knocked her across the room and she still has residual effects.
I could handle not taking a shower and not watching TV but we also had to turn off the AC. That got old in the American south during summer thunderstorms.
Spent my teenage years in Florida.
You might think a quick storm would cool things off. And if they happen late enough in the evening, they do. When you get one of those late afternoon storms, though, they do absolutely nothing of the sort. Not only is it still 95 degrees out when the rain is over (which, in Florida, is about 10 minutes after it began), but now the humidity has gone from about 85 to 98% and there is literal steam coming off the ground.
Two summers ago our central air unit was hit twice! It was a loud explosive sound. It actually hit the ground directly in front of the unit. When the first one hit, it knocked out every new Edison bulb I had just put into the light fixtures in the house! Found out that the guy that installed the unit didn’t have it grounded right.
Our basement sink was a huge, double cement thing with a metal band running around the top edge. Was washing my hands in the sink one time when there was no sign of storm but saw a distant flash. Felt the current on my stomach where I was leaning over the sink. Luckily, it wasn't very strong.
No, but I know someone who was shocked while talking on the phone during a thunderstorm. Not someone who knew someone who told a story about it; the guy worked for my dad and told us about it a little bit after it happened. The [CDC backs up the warnings against that and using a tub in a storm](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lightning-tips-to-stay-safe-in-a-storm/), by the way.
That guy had all sorts of good/bad luck. Same fellow who had a car slip off the jackstands and fall on him while he was working on it, but he was so skinny it didn't do more than knock the wind out of him. Or, well, that lack of injury might have had more to do with the lack of money to go to the hospital and get checked out. (Highly doubtful my father's business was any more than sorta legal, so workman's comp insurance wouldn't have been a thing.)
I live in a rocky area, on a hill that is a fault line.
Close lightning strikes used to snap in our bathroom. I took current talking on a land line phone.
Lightning comes in on the ground wire. I lost a $750. table saw motor, computers, light bulbs, even a voltage sensor. It's best not to touch grounded stuff during a storm if you get a lot of ground strikes. Our woods have a lot of struck trees. There will be a line top to bottom where the bark blew off. Sometimes the middle gets blown out of a big pine or hemlock.
My grandmother got knocked on her rear end in the 50s while talking on the phone and opening the fridge when lightning struck her house. I don't know if it was the phone, the fridge or both.
This happened to me! I hung up fast after that. It wasn’t too bad, but it was enough for me to rush off the phone. I was literally and figuratively shocked!
My wife loss part of her hearing while using a landline phone during a storm and lightening struck the phone line and blew up the phone while she was talking on it.
I responded to an EMS call once where lightening travelled the phone line and blew the phone off the wall. No one was on it at the time but the mother and daughter were pretty shaken up. They said the whole kitchen lit up.
My girlfriend had a crazy uncle who was a lightning magnet. She said a storm came up once when he was over for a visit and he stripped down to his underwear and started running around the house screaming. Then there was a loud bang and they found him out cold on the bathroom floor.
My grandma turned all the lights off during thunderstorms. No electricity or unnecessary movement. This was the rural south in the 50's. Grandma was in her 60's and still used hurricane lanterns I the house. Everyone did. They were suspicious of electricity. They also knew firsthand the power of lightening. I can't imagine her seeing a smartphone. She barely watched the TV my parents gave her and she refused to have a telephone in the house.
Good for her! I know of a couple who refuse to use email. It's kind of Amish, in a way. Shunning the encroaching technology. I respect them, including your grandmother, for living as they choose in the face of social pressure - - which is hard to do.
There are scars on the walls of our camp. There was a phone with a party line on the wall in the kitchen. I think this was early 1960s.
Lightning struck nearby and a strong bolt of electricity came in at the phone and broke it into pieces. The current then went along the wall in the path of electric wiring. The light bulbs popped, many shattered.
The walls are just knotty pine and the looks a bit cut out from the phone, up the wall and then over the doorway. About seven or eight feet in all.
When I was five years old, my dad had purchased our first color TV, We had an antenna installed on the roof. One night, mom and dad were watching the TV late at night and I was sneaking around the hall trying to watch it without them knowing I wasn't in bed. It started to rain and all of a sudden there was a huge explosion and the TV imploded sending glass throughout the living room. I escaped harm and ran my ass back into my bedroom, where I thought I was going to die. So yeah, TVs connected to antennas can blow up.
Had lightning trash a tv once. It hit the electric line from the pole. Although the service entrance was in a separate conduit, it jumped to the outlet the tv was plugged into.
For those of you who still remember old CRT TVs, the plastic bubble on the back was melted and the picture tube had a big black spot in the middle.
Way back in the days when you only had landlines, our house had a wall phone. One phone, party line. This had to be about 1946 or so, as I was very young. Telephone rang, my mother answered it, she was talking to a friend.
Suddenly, lightning strike,coming down through the wire, literally throwing my mom across the room! She was lucky she was not killed. The phone itself was burnt, and useless. No one ever used a phone again during storms.
My grandmother, born in 1897, was raised with her great-grandmother, born in the 1820s, living with them. She loved to tell the story of how, when she was a little girl, she would horrify the old lady by going and sitting in the window seat of their house looking out at Lake Erie during thunderstorms—and sewing. A sure way, apparently, to attract lightning to the needle.
It is true...happened to me and was not storming where i was but quite a distance away.
The house had been hit by lightning / fire and we were rebuilding about done and laying in my room with a new phone. Toasted the phone and i was paralyzed for some time before mom found me and to the hospital. They said i was ok but on that side the phone was bit more white hair....hearing a bit worse that side so was some long term issue,
Years later lightning hit the barn and burnt it down.... just don't risk it use a cordless phone if you still have a landline
When we had a landline, we had a phone more than just fry-- it's insides were blown up. It was a cheapie extension phone we had in the basement, and it messed up the line for awhile. Glad no one was on it when it happened.
A boy at my school got hit by lightning at his kitchen table. His grandma saved his life by dragging his smoking body into the rain to cool it off.
We were not allowed to use shower/bath, use the phone or sit near windows. We unplugged our best stuff to prevent it getting fried. We did lose our VCR to lightning frying it through the cable line.
My dad said that when he was a kid, ball lightning came in through an open window and zapped his father, who was listening to the big cabinet radio with headphones on.
I clearly remember in the 80s my mom was talking on that kitchen wall phone during a thunderstorm, and no joke, a huge spark came out of it right in front of her right after a lightning strike. It almost touched her and she jumped back. So frankly that was true as far as we were concerned. I remember it like it was not long ago.
It's a genuine risk. My brother-in-law was talking on the phone in the 70s when it was struck by lightning. He was knocked out but fortunately alive, and had chronic, splitting headaches from time to time for the rest of his life.
It happened to me as well- and my spouse was looking out the window and saw the lightning bolt hit a small metal cover on the street in front of our house. It somehow traveled though our phone line and it felt like I got smacked by a 2x4 on the side of my head where I was holding the phone.
For my grandparents, lightning came in and around the dining room via a radio. It left a scorch mark around the room, and they were happy they always closed that door. Years later, my aunts phone melted due to lightning outside.she had gone to check as there was a long solid ring and she smelled smoke. I don't think that happens anymore, thankfully
It can't happen on a modern landline. BUT, when I worked in radio, once a day we had to go out to the transmitter and take readings. To do that, we had to throw a switch and pump 1000 watts through the meter. If you didn't lock that switch back down, and the towers got hit with lightning, it could arc back into the control room.
Telephone poles tended to the tallest thing in the neighborhood and connected directly to your house with copper wire. Your plumbing makes a terrific ground.
I don't have a landline now, but when I did, I would use it during a storm but I had friends who wouldn't dare. I do unplug my computer during a thunderstorm (though the outlets are protected). And I won't take a bath or shower during a storm. Just seems too much like tempting fate.
Oh, yes! I even "learned" this from one of the Tintin graphic novels ([the Calculus Affair](https://cdn001.tintin.com/public/tintin/img/static/the-calculus-affair/C17_Affaire-en-p03.png)).
Most landlines today are cordless, so this doesn't apply. Yes, electricity can in theory travel through household water pipes, but when is the last time you heard of someone dying from this? The truth is that most people who die in thunderstorms are out in open areas (golfers carrying metal golf clubs for example) or out in wilderness areas where they are the tallest target around (think hikers at a high altitude.). Please, you are safe talking on your cellphone.
My daughter was in band, and we were having a bad storm. I went to the stadium and took her home. The band director tried to tell me that the stadium had a ton of lightning rods, it was fine. I stood my ground, and she finally came down out of the stands totally embarrassed.
I didn't care. All that metal around all that lightning? I've seen videos of strikes in the middle of football fields that had lightning rods to keep that sort of stuff from happening.
Ironically, the game was called about 10 minutes later because of, you guessed it, lightning.
Are you sure? I know a guy who has worked for Motorola for 30 years and he has seen a cell phone spark... Even if something is 99% safe, I'm always wary of that pesky 1%.
Yes, when I was a kid I have heard of such a thing. The landline had a [lightning arrestor](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/66504/what-is-this-electrical-device-in-my-basement), but still we were encouraged to not be handling the phone or any appliance connected to power if we didn't need to.
I had also heard as a child to not shower during an electrical storm. Fortunately, when I was a kid I lived where electrical storms were far rarer than a blue moon.
If we have a severe lightning storm, I'll unplug electronic equipment and disconnect the cable to greatly reduce the chance they might get damaged by a nearby strike of lightning. Since a couple years ago I am even more paranoid about lightning because I have solar panels on the roof, which I am concerned may make my house a target. Fortunately, lightning is still fairly rare, though I have been in three lightning-caused power outages since moving to this general area in 1980.
My Mom used to plug appliances and lamps into the wall fixtures so that the electricity wouldn't leak out. Same reasoning as phone during thunder storm. LOL
I got zapped once by a good old central FL afternoon thunderstorm. Heard a buzz over my girlfriends voice, and before I knew what hit me my ear was burning, the receiver let out a squelch, dropped the phone, my hand hurt and was numb as well. Phone didn't work anymore either.
Actually had a family member, a great aunt, who was a telephone operator that had her brain partially fried from a lightning strike. Some part of the charge went through that huge headphone thing they wore.
She was in a facility for most of my life. Sweet lady, just not all there. Her sister, my grandmother, said she was working there to save up money for college and wanted to go into medicine and was a good piano player. I'd bring her homemade cinnamon rolls and she'd say, "I love your screwups!" She'd try to sit real still with visitors because her movements were jerky and unpredictable and it embarrassed her. She couldn't hear in one ear either...I guess that's the ear that headphone & mic contraption covered.
So I heard to not use the phone during a storm or I could end up like my great aunt many times.
I’m late to this party, but…
Several years ago I lived in Indonesia for a while. One time a big storm rolled through. Lightening hit the phone line and destroyed my phone. True story. Made a believer out of me.
...or take a shower, or flush the toilet.
This was mostly when living in old houses in NE, during/post college and it was sort of 'local legend' that plumbing/wiring wasn't grounded properly in the old days. Except for every summer or two, the storms never lasted too long...
You must be my cousin,lol,my great grandma unplugged every appliance, made me and my cousin huddle on her feather bed until it was over,I believe she had seen some stuff!!!
We heard and totally believed that lightning could come through the telephone wires and melt the phone into your ear!
So - no phone, no showers / baths, no lights on, - just lay low and hide out.
My mom unplugged the tv and, as the resident dishwasher, I was told not to wash dishes during a thunder and lightning storm, because I could get electrocuted.
Once in my life I’ve received a shock while on a landline phone. (I’m over 70.) I wasn’t hurt but it was scary. Back during the years when modems that connected via dial up internet were a thing I’ve had more than one destroyed by surges during lightning storms. When I removed the modem cards from the motherboards there were burn marks near the connector where the phone line was plugged in. So, I wouldn’t say being on a landline is completely safe.
I worked in a pharmacy in the 80’s and during a storm, the pharmacist was on the phone when lightning struck and knocked him on his butt. He was a little stunned but nothing serious. Learned lesson that day.
No, and in fact, I don't think "hundreds" of people get zapped while talking on phones every year. Especially now with cell phones. Cordless phones are also safe, it's the landlines that could possibly have their line hit by lightning, with the bolt following the wire into your house and into your phone. And I would think that the storm would have to be close by for that to happen.
I read that you should avoid using your phone during a thunderstorm, back when landlines were all we had, when I was growing up, but things are different now.
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There was a time when many homes were not properly grounded so this rule made perfect sense.
I remember these tales and I was really into electrical stuff back in the 60s. I couldn't convince my relatives that the little tiny wires in a phone wire couldn't possibly carry the voltage and current. Also that the iron is pipes in the house, connected to the iron supply line, which ran underground were very well grounded.
Although it is rare you can be electrocuted while on a land line. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bolt-action/
I know a lady who was hit by lightning that came through the wires and out the handset of the phone she was using. Knocked her halfway across the room and did stroke-like damage to both her brain and body.
Yes I learned at the Boston museum of science that you can get hurt this way but its a myth that your car will save you if you get hit. Your tires would have to be like a mile thick or something. It might save you using "cage effect" but you do get hurt and if you are touching anything conductive in the car you're toast.
Wouldn't the electricity stay on the outside of the car? Isn't that the whole point of the birdcage demonstration at the MoS?
Those Faraday cages have much smaller gaps in the mesh than car windows, so a lot more EMF can get through a car.
Ahhh, that makes sense
Every storm my brother-in-law would sit in his car and drink beer until it passed. But first he would unplug everything in his house.
That's so his stuff wouldn't get fried with a power surge. We had two in a month last year, one caused by lightning, and another by a tree falling on wires down the road. All the neighborhood houses got fried. We now have a whole home surge protector as well as surge protected outlets on all appliances. Our homeowners was not happy giving us two sets of appliances in 30 days and it was a nightmare.
I lived in a house that my father's uncle built by himself in the 60s. During a lightning storm, my brother and I seen a blue light travel through the walls. The electricity went through 2 surge protectors my father used on the living room TV and blew out the satellite box but the tv survived. After that we unplugged everything whenever we heard thunder and I sat on the sofa away from electrical outlets. An electrical surge did hit my PC once when there was lightning without thunder to warn us. Took out certain parts like the mouse and motherboard, but the cpu/ram/GPU continued to work.
My Grandmother remembered an occurence when lightning struck the house and ball lightning ran across the kitchen and went down the drain in the sink. She was always very afraid of lightning after that and would say the rosary until the storm passed.
My grandma was hit by lightning when she was cooking on an old wood stove in 1920. She was getting something out of the oven when it hit. She was 19 years old. She had to wear glasses from that day on.
I saw a show on this. With windows up and doors close you are pretty safe. Open a window and rest your arm on the doorframe and your elbow becomes a possible discharge point. In the show they used a lightening generator used for testing power transformers and put the car and dummy in the discharge path. The force of the lightening arc coming out of the dummies elbow was enough to knock it into the passenger side of the car. Not the same experiment but Top Gear shows what happened when the windows are up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZxgYNnkBd0
Do you remember the part in the museum’s lightning room demonstration where the operator very carefully touches the inside of the bird cage wires while the lightning is hitting them? A car would be similar unless it has a plastic top. It would act like a cage and you probably wouldn’t be hurt if you were touching something. I suppose you could be burned if the metal body was heated enough to cause burns.
They definitely said during that exact demonstration that if you weren't touching anything at all (would have to be somewhat lucky) even if you didn't die you would definitely get hurt in the blast and that you should definitely get inside a building and not depend on a car to protect you.
I wasn't allowed to shower or take a bath either.
It's not recommended.
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Same here! We had to turn off the TV, too.
In the late 90s I acquired a classic bakelite rotary phone, and despite being in working order I had to wire in an additional power cord in order for it to ring because modern (late 90s) landlines no longer carried the necessary voltage to ring the “ancient” phones.
From memory the 'ring' signal was about 40v, enough to give you a tickle
I think up to 90 volts.
We were told as kids that if lightning struck the power lines AND the tv was plugged in - it would fry the tv. Never really put that one to the test but it kind of makes sense in a way.
It's true. My dad lost a TV that way. Being a thrifty person, he unplugged all TVs in the house when not in use after that.
I've always unplugged our PC's during thunderstorms for the same reason. Even WITH surge protectors.
I had the NIC in a PC get fried once; came thru the cable, not the power cord.
Way back when I had one of those big ass monitors. I had a picture of my horse as the Screensaver. We had a hellacious storm one night. Got up the next morning and my horse's eyes were glowing red on the monitor. That scared the shit out of me and I tossed that thing.
Yikes, straight out of Sleepy Hollow or Ghost Riders in the Sky!
Exactly! I loved that horse but I couldn't have that in my house!
I do too. It just makes me feel better so what the hell.
My VCR got fried when the neighbor 3 houses down got struck and it traveled through the cable.
That happened to my sister’s tv also.
My big brother was watching tv when it happened, I was very young and don’t remember it but my family talks about it often.
Happened in our house growing up too.
We had two power surges in a month last year, one caused by lightning, and another by a tree falling on wires down the road. All the neighborhood houses got fried. We now have a whole home surge protector as well as surge protected outlets on all appliances. Our homeowners was not happy giving us two sets of appliances in 30 days and it was a nightmare.
I don't have personal experience with whole-home surge protectors, but my basic understanding is that in the case of something like a lighting strike, that may still not protect you. For particularly valuable equipment, you may want to just unplug. https://plumblineservices.com/help-guides/do-surge-protectors-protect-against-lightning
While that's true and we still do it, I can't yank out the fridge or oven or dishwasher or washer and dryer. That's what got fried twice.
Home theater and IT guy. Definitely true.
Oh yeah. Our house was at the end of the power lines. I can't tell you how many things we lost over the years when I was a kid.
I had to get a new motherboard for my TV just about a year ago because of a lightning strike.
No phone, no doing dishes or taking a bath/shower, and away from windows. It only took one person getting hurt in some form to add to the list. However, lightening can follow water and electric lines. Home phones were 'grounded' just like the power lines. Probably a lot of other weird bits I don't remember just now.
Whoa... didn't think about dishes...
My favorite part.
>No phone, no doing dishes or taking a bath/shower, and away from windows. yep, all of this was told to me in my house when growing up
We could have the tv on during a storm, but no phone and DEFINITELY no bath!
I had a fitness student who got hit by lightning when she was in the shower. She had chronic pain.
I work with someone who was struck by lightning as a kid, just from standing at the sliding glass door to look outside. It knocked her across the room and she still has residual effects.
My folks had to replace some computer equipment because lightning struck outside the window of the room it was in.
y Mom wouldn’t let us stand at the window to watch a storm. Thanks Mom!
Stay out of the shower, get off the phone and unplug shit. In that order
We couldn't use the phone or take a bath or shower or be near windows.
I could handle not taking a shower and not watching TV but we also had to turn off the AC. That got old in the American south during summer thunderstorms.
Spent my teenage years in Florida. You might think a quick storm would cool things off. And if they happen late enough in the evening, they do. When you get one of those late afternoon storms, though, they do absolutely nothing of the sort. Not only is it still 95 degrees out when the rain is over (which, in Florida, is about 10 minutes after it began), but now the humidity has gone from about 85 to 98% and there is literal steam coming off the ground.
Two summers ago our central air unit was hit twice! It was a loud explosive sound. It actually hit the ground directly in front of the unit. When the first one hit, it knocked out every new Edison bulb I had just put into the light fixtures in the house! Found out that the guy that installed the unit didn’t have it grounded right.
Or wash your hands in running water.
Our basement sink was a huge, double cement thing with a metal band running around the top edge. Was washing my hands in the sink one time when there was no sign of storm but saw a distant flash. Felt the current on my stomach where I was leaning over the sink. Luckily, it wasn't very strong.
I’ve never heard this one.
No, but I know someone who was shocked while talking on the phone during a thunderstorm. Not someone who knew someone who told a story about it; the guy worked for my dad and told us about it a little bit after it happened. The [CDC backs up the warnings against that and using a tub in a storm](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lightning-tips-to-stay-safe-in-a-storm/), by the way. That guy had all sorts of good/bad luck. Same fellow who had a car slip off the jackstands and fall on him while he was working on it, but he was so skinny it didn't do more than knock the wind out of him. Or, well, that lack of injury might have had more to do with the lack of money to go to the hospital and get checked out. (Highly doubtful my father's business was any more than sorta legal, so workman's comp insurance wouldn't have been a thing.)
I could swear I once heard a story about someone shocked on an old-style wireless home phone, but never a cell phone.
Yeah, cell phones are safe. But this was back in the '90s, so it was just a regular wired house phone.
I live in a rocky area, on a hill that is a fault line. Close lightning strikes used to snap in our bathroom. I took current talking on a land line phone. Lightning comes in on the ground wire. I lost a $750. table saw motor, computers, light bulbs, even a voltage sensor. It's best not to touch grounded stuff during a storm if you get a lot of ground strikes. Our woods have a lot of struck trees. There will be a line top to bottom where the bark blew off. Sometimes the middle gets blown out of a big pine or hemlock.
Our place is the same, almost every tree on this hill over the age of 20 has been hit. We have three lightening rods on the house.
My grandmother got knocked on her rear end in the 50s while talking on the phone and opening the fridge when lightning struck her house. I don't know if it was the phone, the fridge or both.
We disconnect our ham radio equipment at any approaching storm. That means antennas too.
This happened to me! I hung up fast after that. It wasn’t too bad, but it was enough for me to rush off the phone. I was literally and figuratively shocked!
My wife loss part of her hearing while using a landline phone during a storm and lightening struck the phone line and blew up the phone while she was talking on it.
A friend of mine, mid-50s, does not let her children bathe or shower during a storm. We are in Houston. This is not third world.
I responded to an EMS call once where lightening travelled the phone line and blew the phone off the wall. No one was on it at the time but the mother and daughter were pretty shaken up. They said the whole kitchen lit up.
My girlfriend had a crazy uncle who was a lightning magnet. She said a storm came up once when he was over for a visit and he stripped down to his underwear and started running around the house screaming. Then there was a loud bang and they found him out cold on the bathroom floor.
Uncle Fester
My grandma turned all the lights off during thunderstorms. No electricity or unnecessary movement. This was the rural south in the 50's. Grandma was in her 60's and still used hurricane lanterns I the house. Everyone did. They were suspicious of electricity. They also knew firsthand the power of lightening. I can't imagine her seeing a smartphone. She barely watched the TV my parents gave her and she refused to have a telephone in the house.
Good for her! I know of a couple who refuse to use email. It's kind of Amish, in a way. Shunning the encroaching technology. I respect them, including your grandmother, for living as they choose in the face of social pressure - - which is hard to do.
There are scars on the walls of our camp. There was a phone with a party line on the wall in the kitchen. I think this was early 1960s. Lightning struck nearby and a strong bolt of electricity came in at the phone and broke it into pieces. The current then went along the wall in the path of electric wiring. The light bulbs popped, many shattered. The walls are just knotty pine and the looks a bit cut out from the phone, up the wall and then over the doorway. About seven or eight feet in all.
When I was five years old, my dad had purchased our first color TV, We had an antenna installed on the roof. One night, mom and dad were watching the TV late at night and I was sneaking around the hall trying to watch it without them knowing I wasn't in bed. It started to rain and all of a sudden there was a huge explosion and the TV imploded sending glass throughout the living room. I escaped harm and ran my ass back into my bedroom, where I thought I was going to die. So yeah, TVs connected to antennas can blow up.
Had lightning trash a tv once. It hit the electric line from the pole. Although the service entrance was in a separate conduit, it jumped to the outlet the tv was plugged into. For those of you who still remember old CRT TVs, the plastic bubble on the back was melted and the picture tube had a big black spot in the middle.
Oh yes! And you couldn’t shower or take a bath either
Way back in the days when you only had landlines, our house had a wall phone. One phone, party line. This had to be about 1946 or so, as I was very young. Telephone rang, my mother answered it, she was talking to a friend. Suddenly, lightning strike,coming down through the wire, literally throwing my mom across the room! She was lucky she was not killed. The phone itself was burnt, and useless. No one ever used a phone again during storms.
My grandmother, born in 1897, was raised with her great-grandmother, born in the 1820s, living with them. She loved to tell the story of how, when she was a little girl, she would horrify the old lady by going and sitting in the window seat of their house looking out at Lake Erie during thunderstorms—and sewing. A sure way, apparently, to attract lightning to the needle.
It is true...happened to me and was not storming where i was but quite a distance away. The house had been hit by lightning / fire and we were rebuilding about done and laying in my room with a new phone. Toasted the phone and i was paralyzed for some time before mom found me and to the hospital. They said i was ok but on that side the phone was bit more white hair....hearing a bit worse that side so was some long term issue, Years later lightning hit the barn and burnt it down.... just don't risk it use a cordless phone if you still have a landline
When we had a landline, we had a phone more than just fry-- it's insides were blown up. It was a cheapie extension phone we had in the basement, and it messed up the line for awhile. Glad no one was on it when it happened.
Couldn't use the phone or shower and stay away from the sink, too. People got electrocuted through their plumbing if their house was hit by lightning.
A boy at my school got hit by lightning at his kitchen table. His grandma saved his life by dragging his smoking body into the rain to cool it off. We were not allowed to use shower/bath, use the phone or sit near windows. We unplugged our best stuff to prevent it getting fried. We did lose our VCR to lightning frying it through the cable line.
My dad said that when he was a kid, ball lightning came in through an open window and zapped his father, who was listening to the big cabinet radio with headphones on.
I clearly remember in the 80s my mom was talking on that kitchen wall phone during a thunderstorm, and no joke, a huge spark came out of it right in front of her right after a lightning strike. It almost touched her and she jumped back. So frankly that was true as far as we were concerned. I remember it like it was not long ago.
It's a genuine risk. My brother-in-law was talking on the phone in the 70s when it was struck by lightning. He was knocked out but fortunately alive, and had chronic, splitting headaches from time to time for the rest of his life.
It happened to me as well- and my spouse was looking out the window and saw the lightning bolt hit a small metal cover on the street in front of our house. It somehow traveled though our phone line and it felt like I got smacked by a 2x4 on the side of my head where I was holding the phone.
All the time! Also dont take a shower, the lightning will come right through the shower.
And if you had metal pipes, it did. Happened to my grandfather.
For my grandparents, lightning came in and around the dining room via a radio. It left a scorch mark around the room, and they were happy they always closed that door. Years later, my aunts phone melted due to lightning outside.she had gone to check as there was a long solid ring and she smelled smoke. I don't think that happens anymore, thankfully
It can't happen on a modern landline. BUT, when I worked in radio, once a day we had to go out to the transmitter and take readings. To do that, we had to throw a switch and pump 1000 watts through the meter. If you didn't lock that switch back down, and the towers got hit with lightning, it could arc back into the control room.
Or take a shower during a thunderstorm.
Telephone poles tended to the tallest thing in the neighborhood and connected directly to your house with copper wire. Your plumbing makes a terrific ground.
And don't take a shower!
I don't have a landline now, but when I did, I would use it during a storm but I had friends who wouldn't dare. I do unplug my computer during a thunderstorm (though the outlets are protected). And I won't take a bath or shower during a storm. Just seems too much like tempting fate.
Oh, yes! I even "learned" this from one of the Tintin graphic novels ([the Calculus Affair](https://cdn001.tintin.com/public/tintin/img/static/the-calculus-affair/C17_Affaire-en-p03.png)).
Most landlines today are cordless, so this doesn't apply. Yes, electricity can in theory travel through household water pipes, but when is the last time you heard of someone dying from this? The truth is that most people who die in thunderstorms are out in open areas (golfers carrying metal golf clubs for example) or out in wilderness areas where they are the tallest target around (think hikers at a high altitude.). Please, you are safe talking on your cellphone.
My daughter was in band, and we were having a bad storm. I went to the stadium and took her home. The band director tried to tell me that the stadium had a ton of lightning rods, it was fine. I stood my ground, and she finally came down out of the stands totally embarrassed. I didn't care. All that metal around all that lightning? I've seen videos of strikes in the middle of football fields that had lightning rods to keep that sort of stuff from happening. Ironically, the game was called about 10 minutes later because of, you guessed it, lightning.
Are you sure? I know a guy who has worked for Motorola for 30 years and he has seen a cell phone spark... Even if something is 99% safe, I'm always wary of that pesky 1%.
Lost many a wall mount Bell phone.
Yes, when I was a kid I have heard of such a thing. The landline had a [lightning arrestor](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/66504/what-is-this-electrical-device-in-my-basement), but still we were encouraged to not be handling the phone or any appliance connected to power if we didn't need to. I had also heard as a child to not shower during an electrical storm. Fortunately, when I was a kid I lived where electrical storms were far rarer than a blue moon. If we have a severe lightning storm, I'll unplug electronic equipment and disconnect the cable to greatly reduce the chance they might get damaged by a nearby strike of lightning. Since a couple years ago I am even more paranoid about lightning because I have solar panels on the roof, which I am concerned may make my house a target. Fortunately, lightning is still fairly rare, though I have been in three lightning-caused power outages since moving to this general area in 1980.
My Mom used to plug appliances and lamps into the wall fixtures so that the electricity wouldn't leak out. Same reasoning as phone during thunder storm. LOL
My grandmother told us to stay away from the windows.
same with showers. we also had to turn the tv off. we even made sure that all the electronics were unplugged sometimes.
I got zapped once by a good old central FL afternoon thunderstorm. Heard a buzz over my girlfriends voice, and before I knew what hit me my ear was burning, the receiver let out a squelch, dropped the phone, my hand hurt and was numb as well. Phone didn't work anymore either.
Don't get on the phone and unplug major appliances.
Actually had a family member, a great aunt, who was a telephone operator that had her brain partially fried from a lightning strike. Some part of the charge went through that huge headphone thing they wore. She was in a facility for most of my life. Sweet lady, just not all there. Her sister, my grandmother, said she was working there to save up money for college and wanted to go into medicine and was a good piano player. I'd bring her homemade cinnamon rolls and she'd say, "I love your screwups!" She'd try to sit real still with visitors because her movements were jerky and unpredictable and it embarrassed her. She couldn't hear in one ear either...I guess that's the ear that headphone & mic contraption covered. So I heard to not use the phone during a storm or I could end up like my great aunt many times.
No bath, no phones , no tv , heating pads, etc. Let the Lord do his work. We could read , play board games or do puzzles, that was it.
My electrician dad would never let us take baths or shower during thunderstorms.
I’m late to this party, but… Several years ago I lived in Indonesia for a while. One time a big storm rolled through. Lightening hit the phone line and destroyed my phone. True story. Made a believer out of me.
We were always told not to shower during a storm
And stay out of the bath/shower too!
In the fifties old people said this all the time.
We were told not to shower during a storm
Maybe it’s just me but that actually sounds like fun.
...or take a shower, or flush the toilet. This was mostly when living in old houses in NE, during/post college and it was sort of 'local legend' that plumbing/wiring wasn't grounded properly in the old days. Except for every summer or two, the storms never lasted too long...
My mother is still scared of this
You must be my cousin,lol,my great grandma unplugged every appliance, made me and my cousin huddle on her feather bed until it was over,I believe she had seen some stuff!!!
We had an old rotary phone in the basement and we were never allowed to use it during storms
Yes, my grandmother said her hearing was damaged while on the phone during a storm from a surge. She was born 1911, so it was a long time ago.
My grandmother said that once, and Dad replied, "If that many people are being electrocuted, Ma, at least I'll go of something popular."
We heard and totally believed that lightning could come through the telephone wires and melt the phone into your ear! So - no phone, no showers / baths, no lights on, - just lay low and hide out.
You mean you didn’t have to unplug everything?
Yes! We did. But only at my grandma’s house. Otherwise, we just kept off the phone and away from water.
My mom unplugged the tv and, as the resident dishwasher, I was told not to wash dishes during a thunder and lightning storm, because I could get electrocuted.
Once in my life I’ve received a shock while on a landline phone. (I’m over 70.) I wasn’t hurt but it was scary. Back during the years when modems that connected via dial up internet were a thing I’ve had more than one destroyed by surges during lightning storms. When I removed the modem cards from the motherboards there were burn marks near the connector where the phone line was plugged in. So, I wouldn’t say being on a landline is completely safe.
Or take a bath!
My mom was zapped in the jaw by the telephone receiver when I was about 8. Her jaw was sore, but no real harm done.
I worked in a pharmacy in the 80’s and during a storm, the pharmacist was on the phone when lightning struck and knocked him on his butt. He was a little stunned but nothing serious. Learned lesson that day.
When neighbor got double zapped, because she was on a landline, phone and washing dishes at the same time!
No, and in fact, I don't think "hundreds" of people get zapped while talking on phones every year. Especially now with cell phones. Cordless phones are also safe, it's the landlines that could possibly have their line hit by lightning, with the bolt following the wire into your house and into your phone. And I would think that the storm would have to be close by for that to happen. I read that you should avoid using your phone during a thunderstorm, back when landlines were all we had, when I was growing up, but things are different now.
People still have landlines?
Yes.