‘Got our attention’: Lightning hits gas meter at Fairmont residence
Trending
FAIRMONT - As the old adage goes, where's there's smoke, there's fire.
Which is just one of those natural-world occurrences by which Mark Jurick can surely abide, the Fairmont man said Tuesday afternoon.
Let it also be known he was saying that while an electrician and plumber were going over his house, which is in the neighborhood of Fairmont State University.
And they were there because of a new factor Jurick and his wife Frances learned, all at once, the day before.
To wit: Where there's thunder, there's lightning.
And where there's lightning - there's also a fried gas meter, punched out plumbing and scorched wiring.
Well, in this instance, anyway.
"It scared the heck out of us, I can tell you that," the retiree said. "Got our attention."
A substantial clap of thunder, followed by flash and even louder boom, told it.
"Well, first, I ran to the wrong end of the house," he said. "We could smell something burning."
Cords of firewood that he'd had stacked were strewn across the driveway.
And his gas meter was on fire.
Literally.
"I yelled for Frances. I said, 'You gotta call 911.'"
Jurick's spark of reflex and bravery, Fairmont Fire Chief Brian Starn said, saved his house.
"He was right there with his fire extinguisher," the chief said. "I really want to credit him for that. We went rolling fast with four units, and that part of the fire was out when we got there."
Cloud-to-ground lightning can get rolling, too, said Fred McMullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.
It's the stratospheric equivalent of what happens when you scoot across your carpet in your socks and then reach for a doorknob.
That little "ouch" of current you feel, he said, is exactly how the energy dissipation works in such weather.
Spirals of moist air rotate up in clouds, McMullen said, only to form crystals, which are no longer lighter than air.
The heavier crystals begin to fall, and as they do, they careen off the lighter crystals being formed on the way up, he said.
Call it a kind of like a psychics-demolition derby, or the act of padding on the world's largest carpet, with the world's largest feet, in the world's largest socks.
The positive and negative charges created saturate the air.
All that friction and exchange, the meteorologist said, manufacturers all that lightning, which is powerful.
How powerful?
According to the National Weather Service, your standard-issue, cloud-to-ground strike packs the plugged-in equivalent of 30,000 amps - which is about 2,000 times more than the average outlet in your kitchen can handle.
Flashes in the clouds are going to be common around here for the next few days, McMullen said, with thunderstorms predicted at least through Friday.
Jurick, meanwhile, is forecasting extreme diligence on his part.
"I'll be watching," he said.