I have made it clear over time of my love for storms.  Maybe I am weird but I just find the storms enjoyable.  On Thursday July 16, 2009 we had a surprise storm that I found to be a dream come true.  This storm was sudden and small in size thought it caused some damage in the area it covered.  The storm covered most of the Eastern half of the Oklahoma City metro area while the Western half of the city remained sunny and hot.  Although this storm was very exciting and wild, I too was a victim of the damage from this storm.  Most of my damage was an after effect of the storm.  In the photo above you can see the main entrance to Heritage Park Mall in Midwest City, Oklahoma.  As you can see the roof was blown off onto the front wall.  This was just one example of the many buildings that lost roofs as a result of the + or – 80 MPH wind that resulted from this storm.  In the photo below you can see some of the 2 inch hail that we received at our home.

In this picture below you can see one of our repeaters (145.25) antennas bent over from the high winds.  This antenna is a very expensive $900 antenna that is 20 feet long and the pole is more than two inches in diameter.  This antenna still works but is very unattractive to look at.

Just as the antenna above is bent, you can see our other repeater (443.3) antenna that is on our WIN System repeater.  This antenna is just as expensive as the one above.  The wind was very powerful to be able to do this on both towers more than a half mile apart.

There were other damages that were not pictured here such as our car.   One of our cars took many dents because of the hail.  In addition to these there were after the fact damages done because of the power surges after the storm.  This storm knocked down many power poles in my area leaving thousands of people without electricity.  We were one of the fortunate ones that did not lose power long term but rather lost power intermittently over a two day period.  At least I thought we were fortunate.  As the local power company repaired many of the power lines that were destroyed, it resulted in a drain of the rest of the electrical system.  With each pole that was restored, we received a one or two second blink of our lights.  This went on for two days resulting in damage to several of our household appliances.  In the picture below you can see my $200.00 Internet radio that was ruined.  This radio will not even light up now.  In addition to this we lost a computer, a Nintendo Wii that was less than one week old.

The brand new computer that replaced the bad one has now developed an intermittent outage that I cannot duplicate.  The appliance damage is exacerbated by the fact that I live in an old home where there is not an adequate grounding system in the electrical wiring.  The typical surge protector that most people use to protect their appliances are rendered useless in these cases.  They cannot protect from surges because they need an adequate ground to shunt the excessive voltages to.  Without giving the surge protector a good ground to send the excessive voltage to, it leaves those appliances vulnerable.  In fact I have every one of these appliances plugged into these surge protectors.  There may be other problems that I have not found yet.  There were many trees that were split in half all over my neighborhood leaving the streets filled with leaves and tree branches.

This damage leaves me a little conflicted on the storm that was so enjoyable at the time.  This was a wakeup call that shows that we can be a victim during and after the storm.  Although the storm was over two days ago, I continue to get blinking lights due to the power company reinserting those downed lines back into the system.  If you live in an older home that does not have adequate grounding, you will be vulnerable to power surges even if you have surge protectors installed.  It looks as though I have a lot of work to do to get this place up to standards.  Surprisingly it was not the lightning that caused these damages.  It was after the storm when all these surges happened that has resulted in the damages to my appliances.  This makes it even worse because even if you were responsible and unplugged your appliances when you saw the storm coming, you would have plugged them back in after the storm.  There would ordinarily be no reason to unplug my appliances with the current sunny skies yet these ongoing power surges allow continue to damage my equipment on this sunny day.

If you are like me and have a lot of electronic equipment, you may want to do some research and find out what constitutes true surge protection.  You may find out that you have no protection at all like myself.  I hope this post helps to alert you to the risks that are inherent with electronic equipment.  If you have this equipment, you may want to take some action to protect yourself.