I live on the coast of Oregon and our weather has been a bit unsettled. Lightening is a rare occurrence here. Tuesday night we had a storm roll through and there were three lightening flashes. The second was right over my house with a flash and instant thunder. What followed was the weird part.

My radio turned on. It happened about three to four seconds after the lightening. However in the intermediate few seconds before the radio came on I heard the song "Angels We Have Heard On High". I was a bit confused but eventually I realized there was one of those Christmas cards with a little song player in it sitting on top of the radio. Squeezing the card causes it to play, "Angels We Have Heard On High"

So! Would an EMP cause that sort of behavior?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

Technically, I think, what you get from lightning isn't an EMP, just a plain old electromagnetic field.

ADDED: Depending on the trigger mechanism, the loud sound could have set it off.

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A lightening of what?

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We got the part of the same storm where I live, which is pretty close to you, and the worst we got was a little flicker in the lights.

Lightning has a small EMP component to it, however if it hit a large metal object (such as a metal roof) that EMP effect can be increased.

It does have a stronger Raidio Pulse however, that can be picked up by simple electrontics as a loud pop, or in some cases provide power to a device if it has a trasformer of coild as part of its circut

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Ah, good ol' sferics! One can literally have hours of fun listening to a "quiet" band on the radio, waiting for the intermittent hissing that indicates lightning going off somewhere (for the record, it works in AM and FM). I've been able to pick them up even when a storm is miles away...

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In my old house, a very close lightning strike would cause a very distinct "crack" like the sound of a BB or piece of gravel hitting glass. The sound seemed to come from the window or A/C unit in it.

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Thanks for the various replies. It just goes to show you that you cannot substitute a spell checker for poor editing skills. Yes, the entire discussion has been lightening my concern with lightning.

It also fried my poor old PC, Win 98, PII, 64 meg of memory and I don't think I can fix it this time. Damn I hate spending money on these machines.

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

Good lord! A coasty! Do you make telescopes by any chance?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

I've been through Toledo, OR once.

I seem to remember it was a tiny town of maybe 30 houses. This was back in the early 80's.

Does it still have it's one horse resident?

__________________
There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

Make them...no. Hell, I don't even own one...yet

Well, seems to me that a pulse of RF energy is an electromagnetic pulse by definition...

it is not a unknown idea that lightning can cause EMP damage, I have heard of electronic appliances being damaged after lightning stikes in the vicinity, though this is not really that conclusive, there may have been some conduction or induction involved that was not noticed.

Anyway, I have noticed that high voltage sparks close by can cause problems with some electronics, and expect this is caused by the electromagnetic waves the things radiate...

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One! I can see a bunch of them from my window. It is a tiny town though, only about 3600 by the sign. I was raised in a town of 300 in NE Oregon, so this is big city for me.

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

Want to learn?

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

I was thinking about it doing that instead of buying one. I decided that might not be the best idea because I wouldn't know if it is working properly

sferics and tornadoes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Gr...rnado_outbreak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sferics
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=...fier=AD0440215
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?...rics+tornadoes

While I don't know if it's been conclusively proven or not, there's been speculation for years that the EMP "pulse" from a nearby lighting stroke, especially a powerful one can actually cause cardiac arrest by messing up the heart rhythm if it occurs at just the right time in the heart's electrical cycle.

There have been cases over the years where people have been found dead out (hikers, etc). They suspected lightning but there were no visible signs of electrocution, that is conduction current flowing through the body. Then there was one case I remember reading about on a golf course. Lighting struck and golfer went into cardiac arrest, but wasn't actually hit, and they ruled out ground voltage drop. They thought this was a good candiate for EMP induced cardiac arrest.

Most cloud to ground lightning is negative-- that is the strike transfers negative charge to the earth below (a charge separation occurs between the top and bottom of the cloud, with electrons going to the bottom -- this negative charge on the bottom spreads out to the ground below with normal cloud to ground lightning). As this goes on, the cloud gets a net positive charge with respect to ground, and there will be very powerful "positive flashes" that finally equalizes that.

These positive flashes are generally about order of magnitude stronger than normal lightning. Current is ~300kA with ~1GV behind it. These will make a pretty good EMP. And they can be very dangerous to aircraft it one happens to get in the path. Positive flashes are well beyond the design standards for lightning hits. I don't think they even realized how strong positive flashes could be until the '70s.

-Richard

Eveindently Lighting based EMP effects are being studied.

Here is a link to the best one I found.

http://www-star.stanford.edu/~vlf/pu...is/node13.html

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/