The three taken of the church at night were taken by me at ~4am yesterday. We were woken (along with the rest of the environs it turns out) by ceaseless (truely) thunder and lightning. Usually, you'll hear a few loud ones, then it'll pass over, but this went on and on. I got up to see if I could snap anything, and I was 'rewarded'. I went downstairs and openned the window to get a better view of the church and the direction of the lake. One of the movies is of the church being hit by lightning for the SECOND time this year. The first time, the clock completely stopped and had to have a new lighting conducter installed. It took them weeks to fix it. This time, I felt the hairs on my face standing on end and my hands tingled. You can see the camera shake. I sent it to the local TV station! Now the church doesn't bing-bong on the quarter hours, only on the hour.
All day yesterday, the rain kept up until the afternoon, then it completely let it rip. We were at our French teacher's for lunch, and she lives quite up the hill from us. On the way down, there was a brown river flowing along the road, and dotted along the side people where frantically trying to sweep away the water from their houses. When we got home, we saw that the stream had completely burst its banks and was in the process of drowning all the houses round the church (not ours, we're up the hill). The pompiers were trying to dig out all the detritus that was clogging it up, and laying sandbags. Naturally, we went for a walk to see the mayhem.
The pompier successfully moves some stuff, and the stream goes down.
Two excited wee boys!
This is the 'secret tunnel' under the railway to the park. The water was nearly touching the ceiling.
This is the big tunnel under the railway that we usually take to the park. We still haven't got to the lake yet to see what went on there.
This afternoon the sun came out and the town breathed a collective sigh of relief. The weekend is forecast to be lovely. Ha.
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PS - news reports today said a farm building in the area was struck and caught fire. This was the most intense lightning storm I've been through, and that's saying something! (New Orleans...)
It's 100 degrees (F) in Redwood City today! :)
I heard (from our mutual father-in-law) that before the invention of the lightning rod (by Ben Franklin--a practical outgrowth of his chicken-zapping experiments) church bell ringers got electrocuted by lightning pretty frequently.
if you stop the movie right before the lightning on the tower there is lightning lower down. is it coming from the ground???? siscat
We were trying to work that out too. It could be arcing off the conducter to the ground...
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