CASI Headquarters Struck By Lightning
August 27, 2000

Additional information on the lightning strike. Two severe thunderstorms came over CASI HQ between 10pm and midnight on August 27. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for our area of the county. We were the only game in town; if you look at the AccuWeather.com warning map, we were the only county under warnings at the time of the close strikes. See the radar animation and note where CASI HQ is pointed out on the map to the right (you are looking near the center of the image). The storms came from the East, which is extremely unusual here and may have helped their severity (storms usually come from the West and decrease in strength when they come off of the mountains). See the Intellicast.com Radar Animation For Yesterday to see how the storms dodged us early then came in from the east.

Three strikes hit VERY close (0 to 1/3 sec difference between the lightning and thunder which would mean approx. 0-350 feet if you use the counting method) hit between 10:48 and approx. 11:15pm. One or more of these strikes apparently hit the 30 foot metal pole on which the CASI2 Weather Station was installed. See the AccuWeather Lightning Strike display map to the left. This map makes placement of the strikes difficult because the only marker, the red line, is the railroad. Click here for an expanded view. I believe that either the strike that hit HQ was the one indicated by the arrow, and the other two were the two that appear "on" the railroad, or CASI HQ is the one on the right of the two "on" the railroad and the third was the one just on the other side. I am several hundred feet from the railroad but I am unsure of the scale of the map.

The Texas Weather Station froze at 10:48pm and stopped responding. At that time it was rebooted but came up all 00's. You can see below by the graph up to 11:00pm (last Internet report by the station, still transmitted by the software even though the station had stopped responding) that the lightning counts had increased and steadied out at 138, not a high level, but the consistency is interesting (a maximum of 358 counts was reached at 10:42pm). 0.60" of rain also fell in an extremely short amount of time before 10:48pm, totalling 1.73" according to the CASI Backup Station CASI 4, by the time it was all over. The KUNV airport, just miles away, reported a mere .75". Check out the Storm Total Precipitation graphic below (click here for zoom-out) and note that the track of the storm(s) can be seen right over CASI HQ with between 1.5-2.5" of precipitation in the area, which verifies the CASI4 measurement.



The following morning I examined the pole from the ground and did not see any obvious lightning damage, however the pole was grounded several feet by a copper rod and lead so it's possible that the lightning grounded itself with little damage, although more may become apparent when I take down the pole next week to install a different weather station. I don't know what else it could have hit within 500 feet of the house as there is nothing else which is well grounded in that range, other than power poles, but there was no interruption in power and no other equipment *appears at this time* to be damaged. Update: 8/29/00 : It was suggested that the junction box on the pole was probably burnt out and that the lightning probably did not even enter the console.

© 2000 Central Atlantic Storm Investigators