Phil,
This is an incredible story!  Talk about a miracle!
Virgie and Hoshi
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 3:51 PM
Subject: Who turned The Lights Out?


> Note.  This message actually is referring to Monday.
>
>     Yesterday, I sat outside during the late afternoon for about
> an hour listening to the thunder of an approaching storm.  I kept
> drifting off to sleep but each time I did, the thunder would
> awaken me.  I love listening to the storms and falling rain even
> though I was nearly killed by lightning once but I'll tell you
> about that later in this message.
>
>     Anyhow, the storm did not sound as if it were all that close.
> We live down hill, to the south, of a pretty high ridge about a
> mile to the north of us.  This ridge seems to funnel storms to the
> north or south of us, at least that's my theory, because it is
> very uncommon for a storm to pass directly overhead where we live.
> It happens, as you soon will read about, but not often.  Normally
> we seem to be on the edge of a storm passing by to the far north
> or far south.
>
>     So, as I said, I'm out on our deck swing, which has a cloth
> canopy, waiting to see if it starts to rain which means I would
> then get up and remove the cushion from the swing and carry it
> inside until the storm was over.  It is a large section of
> upholstered foam rubber.  I just simply peal off three Velcro
> strips, and carry it indoors.  If I let it get too wet, it takes
> several hours for it to dry.  This is what I ended up doing
> yesterday but the rain only lasted about three minutes because the
> storm passed to the south of where we live.
>
>     Later that evening, Gretchen came home and told me she
> witnessed a cloud to ground lightning strike and it was probably
> no more than 50 to 60 feet from her car as she drove home.  She
> began by asking me if lightning isn't supposed to come from the
> cloud to ground.  According to my research I did years ago, plus
> what I have studied in recent years, lightning actually begins
> from the ground but what we see is the lighting bolt flash coming
> from the cloud to earth.  The storm builds up a densely compacted
> ozone corridor to the ground before the spark from the ground is
> generated.  This, in turn, acts as an electrical contact, or
> signal, and the lightning bolt arks to the ground.  The subsequent
> thunder is generated due to the super heated air manufactured by
> the tremendous voltage and amperage.  The thunder is created when
> the ambient air suddenly is super heated and instantly returned to
> cool air which then collapses in upon itself much like the
> compression of air produced by a hand clap.
>
>     Gretchen asked this question because she said, as she was
> driving alone in the rain, she saw a small flicker of light just
> off the road and glanced that way to see what it might be.  Just
> then, the lightning flashed and struck the ground exactly at the
> point she was focused on.  This opportunity is rare, that is, as
> much lightning as there is worldwide every second, few people ever
> see a direct lightning strike.
>
>     Lightning is, of course, nothing more than electrical energy.
> It is a lot of energy, without a doubt, and you certainly don't
> want to be anywhere around it when it arks to earth, but it is
> energy regardless.
>
>     There are cold and hot types of lightning bolts.  Hot bolts
> normally don't kill a person.  they may start a fire or cause some
> damage to whatever it hits but they are called hot bolts because
> they are low voltage and even lower amperage.  It isn't the
> voltage in lightning that kills but rather the amperage.  This is
> true of all electricity.  That's why you don't die instantly when
> you plug your fingers into your house wall socket; the amperage is
> low enough.  Cold lightning bolts have been estimated as much as
> 500,000 amperes and 1,000,000,000 volts.  That will kill anyone.
>
>     When I was about five years old, my dad and uncle took me
> with them when they went on a fishing trip to the Lakes of the
> Ozarks.  We were in the cabin one day because it was raining.  I
> went outside and stood on the covered porch to watch the rain.  As
> I stood and watched, suddenly there was a brilliant flash and the
> loudest thunder clap one could imagine.  Frightened, I went
> running back into the cabin.  After the storm, we heard people
> talking about a tree that had been hit by lightning.  As we drove
> out of the camping area to go get something to eat, we saw the
> tree.  There was nothing wrong with the tall tree except for one
> thing: it had no bark.  It looked bleached white compared to all
> the surrounding trees.  Lightning hat hit the tree, super heated
> the electrical conducting sap of the tree, and the result was all
> the bark exploding outward, leaving the tree naked.
>
>     A youth pastor friend of mine went to a church camp in the
> state of New York.  One day a big electrical storm blew up.  My
> friend grew up on an Iowa farm so he was used to storms but this
> one was very different.  He watched the lightning for some time
> but suddenly he witnessed a direct strike, not far from his cabin,
> which struck the ground.  to his amazement the lightning literally
> bounced back into the air like a ball.  In fact, it bounced as
> many as three times.  He reported he witnessed at least six
> strikes exactly like this in a short period of time and some bolts
> bounced more than three times.  I asked what happened when they
> stopped bouncing and he said the bolts of lightning just suddenly
> exploded as if that was where they struck the ground originally.
>
>     A friend of mine from Boulder, Colorado decided to go into
> the high country and do some hiking with some friends.  Colorado
> has 57 trails that will cross 14,000 feet at the highest point so
> there is a lot of enthusiasm for hiking in this state.
>
>     My friend, and his friends, had reached the 12,000 foot level
> on one of the trails when my friend fell and broke his ankle.
> They had no choice but to reverse course and begin the long
> journey back down the mountain.  They helped my friend as much as
> they could but it was slow going.
>
>     When you are above 8,000 feet, and especially higher, a
> thunder storm can blow up within seconds.  The problem at the
> higher elevations is that you are often, and quite literally, in
> the clouds and thunderstorms generally carry electricity.  Just
> such a storm developed and quickly engulfed the high mountain
> hikers.  They were still at the 10,000 foot level.  My friend told
> me later that not only did it quickly begin raining, but lightning
> began striking the side of the mountain all around them.  They all
> spread out and stopped and hunkered down to attempt to make as
> small a target as possible.  Laying down on the ground is not wise
> because if lightning strikes the ground nearby, it fragments and
> spreads as it penetrates the soil.  It is therefore best to simply
> squat and make yourself as small as possible creating a smaller
> target.  My friend said that he suddenly, in the middle of all the
> flashing and crashing of the thunder, smelled ozone so strongly,
> it was almost over powering.  He braced himself because he knew he
> likely was in the path of the next lightning bolt.  When the
> lightning struck, he said it was no more than ten feet from where
> he was.  Soon the storm passed, and they eventually got him down
> off the side of the mountain.
>
>     When I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, I was talking to a retired
> farmer one day about a term paper I was writing in high school.
> My subject was lightning.  I told him about my research into the
> characteristics of lightning and that one book described what is
> called ball lightning.  The text book said that some lightning
> will strike a tree or telephone pole or even a fence post, curl
> up into what looks like a glowing ball, roll to the ground and
> then it starts rolling across the open ground as if it really were
> a ball.  The first thing it comes in contact with, the ball
> explodes just as if that were the very place the lightning bolt
> had hit in the first place.  The farmer told me he had literally
> seen ball lightning on his farm and he said the book was very
> accurate in the description and how ball lightning formed and then
> detonated.  Sometimes this ball lightning is called plasma balls
> by scientists.
>
>     A few years ago, a friend had stopped by to help me with one
> of my two computers.  He had finished his work and we were
> standing in the larger rooms of my small two room office.  It is
> in the very room I am writing from at this moment.  Back then, I
> had a large metal office desk.  I was leaning against it as my
> friend stood in the middle of the room and talked.  As we talked,
> I heard a rather loud sounding thunder storm approaching from the
> west.  It had just rolled off the mountains and was slowly coming
> our way.  I went into the other part of the office and unplugged
> everything just in case the storm went overhead.  I left
> everything in the larger room plugged in but decided, if the storm
> came any closer, I would unplug all my equipment.
>
>     We continued talking and I leaned against the metal desk
> again as we talked.  I thought little of the new antenna I had put
> on the tower that had its tip at 90 feet.  My friend finally said,
> "I was born and raised here in Colorado but I have never seen
> lightning like I am seeing out your office windows right now."  It
> had not yet started to rain.  Dry lightning of this nature is
> particularly dangerous and violent.  The lightning storm continued
> for at least 20 minutes before a single rain drop fell.
>
>     Did you know that lightning can precede a building storm by
> as far as 20 miles?  that means, the front of a thunder storm is
> more dangerous than the back of one.  By the way, you can turn on
> your radio and tune off a local station and listen for the louder
> pops which is an electrical discharge.  then you can count the
> seconds until you hear the thunder.  That is supposed to be the
> number of miles the lightning is from where you are.  Don't bet
> your life on that one but that's what they claim.
>
>     As we continued our conversation, the man's wife came out to
> my office from our living room to see if we were done with the
> computer.  She commented on the lightning as well.  Suddenly, I
> lost my hearing.  All I remember was a sound in the room that
> sounded like a shotgun blast.  Moments later, as my hearing
> slowly returned, my friend's wife said, "I saw a flash of light
> near you," and she reached over, grabbing my arm, and pulled me
> away from the desk.  What she had seen was the lightning which had
> struck my ham radio antenna 65 feet in the air, raced down my
> transmission line, and flashed over my grounding switch that was
> switched to ground.  This forced the lightning bolt right back
> outside and into my 8 foot long ground rod pounded into the ground
> years earlier.  If that grounding switch had not been turned to
> the ground position, the lightning would have taken the path of
> least resistance which could have been my desk upon which I was
> leaning.  I was three feet away from the grounding switch.  Every
> breaker in my breaker box flipped off from the tremendous
> electrical energy envelop build up in the room.  The breaker box
> was about five feet away from where I stood and was mounted on the
> outside of the house.  Light bulbs popped all over the house.  One
> of our phones burned out.  Later I discovered that my ham radio
> lost some small component parts from the excessive energy build up
> in the room.
>
>     Later, I asked my friends, and my wife and kids, what the
> strike had sounded like.  They all reported it was just one big
> thunder clap and the loudest they had ever heard.  I never heard
> the thunder; I only heard a loud pop in the room as the ambience
> makeup of the room suddenly converted to electrical energy and
> popped.
>
>     When Sandy and I lived in western Colorado, it was in a small
> town of about 800 people.  The town was above 5,000 feet but in a
> valley immediately at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.  thunder
> storms, although not often, would roll off the mountains and drop
> into this valley.  Thus, the storms were incredibly low to the
> ground.  People were struck by lightning every year because they
> just never thought lightning would strike them.
>
>     One summer, a friend from church brought me home.  sandy was
> already there.  He pulled into the circle drive in front of the
> house as a storm was blowing up.  When I got out, huge drops of
> rain were beginning to fall.  I stepped up on the porch, opened
> the front door, and stepped into the house.  Our patio sliding
> door was open on the other side of the house and I could hear the
> storm building all around the house.  I started to pull my suit
> jacket off and I opened my mouth to tell my wife I was home, when
> I heard, out the back door, what sounded like some giant Paul
> Bunion story book character breaking a telephone pole in half
> across his knee.  A split second later, the loudest thunder clap I
> have ever heard rocked the house and about made me jump out of my
> skin.  Later we found out the lightning had hit a pole not 100
> feet from our back door.
>
>     You would think, after all I have written so far, I would be
> afraid of lightning and I am.  I still think like everyone else
> and that is, lightning won't strike me.  So I sit outside and
> listen to approaching storms just as I used to lay on the living
> room floor as a little boy and watch the storms and the lightning
> in the Iowa skies.  One book I read said that they estimate
> lightning strikes the earth 100 times per seconds all over the
> globe.  They didn't say how many of those 100 times it strikes
> people.
>
> Phil.
> 
>
> Has He Ever Crossed Your Mind?
> www.SafePlaceFellowship.com
>