Williams Air Technologies LLC

Question: Why is Lightning Dangerous? Remember if you can hear thunder or see lightening flashes, You are in the strike zone for  damage or injury.

Worldwide, 16 million lightning storms occur every year—2,000 of those storms are happening simultaneously at any given moment—and it's more than just a spectacular natural light show.

Every year, lightning kills roughly 10,000 people around the world (about 90 in the United States) and injures about 100,000 (approximately 400 in the U.S.).

Lightening causes hundreds of millions in building and related damages each year.

What makes lightning so dangerous, and how does it compare with other weather hazards

Answer:

Lightning is the world's most underrated weather hazard. It's also the most unpredictable.

When it comes to lethal weather, lightning is hard to beat. On average only floods kill more people than lightning. In the United States (and most other places), lightning routinely kills more people every year than tornadoes or hurricanes. Other weather hazards, such as hailstorms and windstorms, aren't even in the running.

One reason lightning is so dangerous is that it's hard to know just when and where it is likely to strike—or how it will behave when it does.

"Lightning is the first thunderstorm hazard to arrive and the last to leave," according to the U.S. National Weather Service. Lightning can actually strike outside the storm that produced it. Although most lightning will strike within 10 miles of its parent thunderstorm, it can strike much farther away. On rare occasions, lightning-detection equipment has recorded lightning striking up to 50 miles away from the thunderstorm.

Another reason lightning is so dangerous is because of the destructive power it carries. The average lightning bolt carries about 30,000 amps of charge, has 100 million volts of electric potential, and is hot, hot, and hot at about 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Add up all of these factors, and it's pretty clear that lightning makes every thunderstorm a potential killer, whether the storm produces one lightning bolt or 10,000.

To make matters worse, lightning isn't restricted to thunderstorms. Although you can't have a thunderstorm without lightning—thunder is the sound that lightning makes—you can have lightning without a thunderstorm.

Lightning has been seen during volcanic eruptions and extremely intense forest fires. It has also occurred during hurricanes and heavy snowstorms. Lightning has even been seen during surface nuclear detonations.

Lightning is unpredictable in other ways, too. Lightning can occur from cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground, cloud-to-air, or within a cloud. And lightning can take many different forms, from streak lightning that appears as a single arc to ball lightning, which manifests as a glowing ball that floats in the air, may move slow or fast or remain in one place, and often explodes with a loud bang.

Lightening protection for a 16 SEER condenser.

Modern air-conditioning is designed to operate using delicate electronic and microcomputer controls. These controls are difficult to trouble shoot and expensive to replace. For example a typical blower motor costs about $75.00 and $250.00 replaced. A modern ECM motor costs about $1000.00 and between $1500 and $2000.00 to replace. This motor is usually connect to a control board using multiple cables. A lightening strike of a communicating system UN protected could cost up to $2500.00 from a small HVAC company and $3500.00 from larger companies.

We suggest protecting your home and equipment against lightening damage .We can install a local unit to protect your indoors and out door units, or a whole house system to protect your entire building and sensititive electronics to include computers, television and other systems that uses electronics.

Local modules are installed by our technicians. Whole house systems are installed by our licensed electricians.

www.williamsairtechnologies.com