There were a bunch of us at the warehouse today, busily working away. A storm was rolling in, nothing new for Windsor in the past few days. Then the phone rang. It was my friend at the Fire Department telling me a funnel cloud had been spotted and heading toward our direction! (thank you Nancy.) As she's telling me this... boom... huge thunder and the power goes out, cutting off the phone. The power came back on and she called back, we finished the conversation and I thanked her. I called Michelle at home to warn her and just as I told her about the funnel cloud, boom... power goes out and phone dies again. I quickly turned my cell phone on and called her back. Power comes back on.
I gathered everyone up and we all went into the front office area. I should mention at this point, for those of you who don't know, I work for a fireworks company, in an explosives magazine! So, we're all in the front when I decide to open the door, look toward the airport and see if I can see anything. It's a glass door, rimmed in metal with a long metal bar across the glass to hold on to when opening the door. I should also mention that the carpet in front of the door was soaking wet as the pummeling rain was coming in under the door.
Just as I grabbed the key with my left hand and the metal bar with my right hand... zap! There was a loud crack of thunder and at the exact same time, lighting hit the ground about 3 feet from the door! I felt a weird tingly sensation through my whole body. My hair stood up and I yelped. The power went off. I was shaking, like I was freezing cold and kept saying "OMG OMG, I got hit by lightning!" There is some debate whether I was hit by the residual lightning running through the metal or from transformer outside that blew sending a surge through the building... regardless, I'm claiming a lightning strike! I saw the lightning hit the ground, it got really skinny at the end, something I did not know before. See, even being electrocuted, you can learn something. (Though thinking about it, the bar should be aluminium shouldn't it?)
It cured the headache I'd had all day! Really, it did. However, as the day wore on I felt not so cured anymore. Actually I started to feel just dreadful. I left at 5, went to see Mich at Shoppers, took my blood pressure and it was NOT pretty. Keeping in mind I take 3 blood pressure pills a day, I can only imagine what it would have been sans medication.
From the Detroit Free Press: "Indoors, outdoors or in a car, don't touch metal objects. They're excellent conductors of electricity." Well no kidding, it's not rocket science but well... I was worried that we wouldn't know if the tornado was about to hit us no power, no radio, no warnings! So I peeked. (Won't do that again!) Even with all this going on, Dave & Ian went to inspect the electrical room to see if anything was smoking, I grabbed a fire extinguisher,(though someone else would have had to use it as I was still unable to control the shaking,) and everyone went around to see if there was anything obvious we should worry about.
We still have no power at work. Well, not true, we have lights in two rooms. One phase of the three phase is working. No computers, phones, fax, cash registers, adding machines... t'was tough doing business today. There was a lot of arithmetic being done on paper with pencils.
So, that's my shocking day. I'm buying a lottery ticket on my way to work tomorrow! My odds have suddenly improved.
For years I have been commenting that I have never been stopped by a RIDE program. Michell and Bob were stopped once, she was maybe 9 years old. The officer asked Bob if he'd had anything to drink, he replied with "no, but I'm not too sure about her," pointing to Michelle. Everyone had a good chuckle and they carried on. I've been on the wrong side of the road, missed it by one street and well, just never been stopped!
