About 30 years ago I was working 3rd shift , so I got a cat nap before I had to go to work. I was sleeping really soundly when BOOM. I think I raised up off the bed about 6″, because I remember flopping back down on the mattress. The next day after work I checked things out. I had 3-4 blown breakers, blew the microwave. My next door neighbor had several blown breakers, a TV, and there were several burn marks on our chain link fences.
This picture was taken in my home town last summer. Pretty cool and lucky he was able to capture it.
And the whole town had hot water from the cold water spigots for a week!
Nice shot John! 
I “know” a few kids who would climb that back in the day.
I guess the system is no longer in use.
had the static electricity build up ahead of an approaching storm while on Mille Lacs twice. First time was scary. We have all been there where the waves are picking up and the fishing keeps getting better and better. Kept hearing a “snap…snap…snap” and asked my brother what the heck was that noise? Looked at my pole and there’s a small electric arch shooting up from the gunwale to my rod, every time a wave went through, my rod would get close enough to arch. Noticed my brother’s line starting to get higher and higher, and yelled out that “we have to get out of here now!” as my feet barely touched the floor to get on the anchor rope. Brother doesn’t get what is going on till he went to turn on the depthfinder and gets a heck of a shock. Since his boat was one of the slower ones out there, we got back to the landing and the line was huge, we beached, tied up and ran to the cab of the truck to wait it out. The landing was on the north end and the wind by now was very strong north to south. When we felt like it was safe to get the boat onto the trailer, the boat was almost high and dry, all the water was being pushed south. That was our first experience with the Mille Lacs tide and gained a new respect for her power.
20 +years ago our house got hit Halloween night. I remember a bright flash,instant thunder and sparks shooting out of a wall outlet 5 feet away from where I was sitting. The outlet sparking sounded like a string of firecrakers going off. I knew right away we got hit by lightning so got up and went to look for singns of damage and or fire. I found a small metal box cover on the floor of the attached garage. At first I didn’t know what it was but soon figured out it was the cover of the signal booster we had to boost tv signals from the roof mounted tv antenna. The cover had been blown all the way across a tw car garage. Other than that no obvious signs of damage. We calld the fire dept to check for potential fire hazards just in case. They found nothing. In the end, the lightning had struck the antenna , blew the signal booster all to heck then fried our sump pump as that apparently is where the lightning found a ground.
Have also had the fishing line floating in the air, hairs raised on the arm experience. NOT a good feeling. Too far from the landing so we ended up beaching the boat and riding that one out in the woods on shore. That was a pretty hairy experience in itself = tall trees and LOTS of lightning.
I now have weather radar on my cell phone and head for the launch if storms start heading my way.
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Have also had the fishing line floating in the air, hairs raised on the arm experience. NOT a good feeling. Too far from the landing so we ended up beaching the boat and riding that one out in the woods on shore. That was a pretty hairy experience in itself = tall trees and LOTS of lightning.
Been there a couple times. Definitely not fun.
I think we were very close once while fishing salmon in Lake Huron back when I was in high school. It was a very muggy and calm day. We motored out to fishing depth and then saw that a thunderstorm on the horizon was working toward us. We idled the boat down to trolling speed and found ourselves in field of static electricity. All the rods were in their holders, upright and buzzing like bees. I went to touch one and was hit with a spark that probably jumped 10″ and blew my hand and arm back with a good bit of force…talk about sting; thank goodness it was all voltage and no amps. The buzzing increased and the rods started arching between themselves, the landing nets were talking too, the compass started spinning and finally the electronics stopped working (not blown out though as they worked fine later). It didn’t take too long to figure out that we needed to clear the AO. About 40 – 50 boats ended up coming off the water if I remember correctly. I didn’t hear if any that stayed were struck or not. I had never seen anything like it before then, never even heard about it. To this day, it’s never happened to me again but I’ve come to learn we were fairly lucky that day.
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