I am in awe tonight, watching lightning strikes coming from the top of the sky to the earth below. I can smell ozone (very nice with a Chassagne Montrachet) and can feel the earth shake with the closest strikes. Ahhhh......

Spring has sprung.

Question:
So.....what is your position on thunderstorms?

Choices:
I love them.
I hate them.

 

Easy for me, love them.

I'm in awe of the power, and always feel small yet alive during great storms.

Oh, do you know where the wine your sipping comes from? (empty suit emoticon)

Big thunderstorms are some of my favorite to watch. Pure sky drama. The place up North has an awesome covered balcony, just off the master bedroom, on the top floor. You're sitting quite high up at this place. Quite a cozy place to be outside, but protected, and watch those monsters roll across the lake. Awesome stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by wine+art:
Oh, do you know where the wine you're sipping comes from? (empty suit emoticon)

Uh..........but of course.

Jean-Marc Pillot. Obscure, but pretty tasty.

PH

Love them.

Love the smell of a storm before it rains, it is so refreshing. Some of the more spectacular thunderstorms I have seen were when I was in Arizona, specifically Sedona and the Phoenix area, amazing.

I love 'em. My favorites to watch are always at the ocean. I've seen some memorable ones in Hilton Head and in Nassau.

quote:

Originally posted by PurpleHaze:
I am in awe tonight, watching lightning strikes coming from the top of the sky to the earth below.

I was under the impression that the observable part of a lightening strike comes from the ground up.

You're under the wrong impression. Although lightning strikes can be generated from ground to sky, cloud originated lightning is also common. Pop into the NOAA website, or check out howstuffworks.com for some fascinating reading.

So.....when you're not nitpicking other people's posts, how do you feel about thunderstorms there WEc?

PH

I'm indifferent to them unless I'm on the highway.

I love them unless I'm hiking and up high with no shelter. The best storm I ever saw was in the Outer Banks of North Carolina but I agree that Arizona is quite a place to see them. Caught one over the Grand Canyon and it was truely awesome to watch.

Generally I love to watch them, but here in Chicago there's a different aspect that scares me and annoys me. I live in an old house (110 years or so) and the house shakes when the big boys roll through. Also, there is the threat that these guys become tornados rather than just t-storm. Finally, we're known to lose power during the big storms, then large amounts of rain have a tendancy to pour into the basement. There are devices that have been designed specifically to prevent flooding during power outages (I own a sump-pro), and last year I bought a generator during a particularly nasty power outage. The generator affords me a level of protection beyond the sump-pro and allows me to plug in the compressor for the cellar cooling unit.

I love watching the lightning. I will sit on the porch and watch as it rolls across the valley....
Last night we had a storm up here too. One (very loud) lightning crack seemed right above the house.
My sister out on Long Island said they had a storm as well.

I gonna go outside now and clean up the yard from the last storm.
Did WIML tell you about our buring tree from Tuesday nights storm?

quote:

Originally posted by PURPLE:
I gonna go outside now and clean up the yard from the last storm.
Did WIML tell you about our buring tree from Tuesday nights storm?

Burning tree, I thought it was a burning bush.

Oh sorry, different book.

We lost over 120 trees on our street according to the city.

I like the little ones like you're talking about. I believe the Tampa and Phoenix areas are the lightning capitols of the US and among the highest in the world. We get lots of lightning with afternoon thunderstorms here in the summer that occur almost daily. But I HATE those that come with 100mph+ winds for hours at a time. The eye of Wilma passed right over my house which is an awesome sight to see the eyewall go up 40-50,000 feet and is kinda surreal as I had an hour of tranquility. Gave me a chance to remove parts of my screen cage that had come loose and inspect the concrete cap tiles that had blown off my roof. Was without power for week (also the year before with Francis). I remember people coming down from up north saying they didn't realize there had been such a serious storm. That's because Katrina happened six weeks before and Wilma's damage was not nearly so catestrophic and so wasn't covered even though 5M people were without power for many days. It is the second most expensive hurricane in US history (behind Katrina) and did much more wind damage over a much larger area than Katrina. Water is always the killer and the cause of catastrophic losses which FL's east coast isn't really subject to like the Gulf coast is because it is so shallow.

Ask my wife. Everything here stops for a thunderstorm. I have to sit on the porch and watch them come in. If I know they are in the area I track them on the computer to see if they are coming close. There is something so truly awesome about something so simply beautiful and so magnificently powerful. One of the things I missed most in Afghanistan last year, although we did have a couple.

So yeah, I love 'em.

Thunderstorms are fun. It's nature's way of fighting back, hoping saying "I hope I get lucky and fry one of those humans pests."

I see I'm the only NO vote.
You wouldn't think they're "fun" if you were up in a plane getting multiple strikes, like I was a few years ago.
Even on the ground they're annoying. Nothing like being on a golf course when you hear that first clap of thunder, and realizing you're carrying a bag of lightning rods on your back.
We don't get very many thunderstorms in this area, but when we do, they have an uncanny ability to zero in on pole-mounted transformers and invariably knock out power to whole neighborhoods.

Have mixed emotions.

When by themselves okay, but when connected with a hurricane, can do without.

As normal, I am in the minority - Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt -

I am with mneeley - horrible when in a plane, horrible when doing any outdoor activity, cause lots of damage (especially when paired with a hurricane) -

Happen here almost daily, especially in the summer but really all winter this year as well -

No thanks - not to mention Florida drivers are bad enough in good weather, much less thunderstorms. And they trigger local flooding here, power outages - Yuck.

Forgot to mention; they're probably the leading cause of forest fires.

Growing up in the SF Bay Area, I didn't really know what a "real" thunderstorm was. Spending my first two years of college in Ohio, I quickly learned what a thunderstorm was really all about.

I remember sitting in the dugout hilariously watching my teammates scrambling to get their spikes off. Only when my coach yelled at me to get mine off, did I start to fathom what was happening.....

quote:

Originally posted by Jcocktosten:
As normal, I am in the minority - Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt -

I am with mneeley - horrible when in a plane, horrible when doing any outdoor activity, cause lots of damage (especially when paired with a hurricane) -

Happen here almost daily, especially in the summer but really all winter this year as well -

No thanks - not to mention Florida drivers are bad enough in good weather, much less thunderstorms. And they trigger local flooding here, power outages - Yuck.

I'm convinced that other states send us their worst drivers...cause all these bad drivers just live here...they aren't from here

I enjoy the evening thunderstorms, but those that mess up the work commute or the weekend during the day I can do without. We get plenty as it is and having grown up about 60 miles east of Tampa in one of the lightning hotbeds of the state...I can handle a few less lightning strikes in my life.