Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Thunder and lightning, or more precisely, lightning and thunder ......

Last night we had a fantastic thunderstorm. At around 9pm the heavens opened, and there were brilliant flashes of lightning followed  closely (some almost instantaneously - and we know what that means!) by crashing rumbles of thunder.


It reminded me of a storm that we had in Le Petit- Pressigny towards the end of last August. It was a costly storm for us in that our router was fatally damaged, but things were much worse for a another home in our village.

Again the storm was a big one, which we enjoyed through our open bedroom shutters, but we didn't have a view of what was happening about 200 m away. Tim had the foresight to turn off our computers, but didn't think to unplug our router.




Taken a couple of days later. The house on the right had a lucky escape from the flames!
If you click on the photograph to enlarge it, you will see the remains of a burned out car.
 
It was only when we went for our bread the next day that we realised that there had been a lightning strike on a barn in the village and that it had virtually burned to the ground. A nearby house was very lucky to have escaped the flames and it must have been a real shock for all concerned. Some of our English neighbours told us later that most of the village had been out watching the scene and trying to do what they could to help those affected.

Luckily I haven't heard about any lasting damage caused by last nights storm.

We did turn off our router, just in case ......

We were just reminiscing about the storm and remembered that apart from the inconvenience it wasn't costly at all. We managed to get the router replaced under the guarantee - we just didn't tell the company the circumstances in which the router had 'stopped working'. 

8 comments:

  1. Much as it's a pain in the posterior, I'm not sorry to see the rain as we need it. The problem here in Scotland (unlike France) is that once it starts, it forgets to stop! Hope it's better with you.

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  2. I did not hear a thing last night!!! Must have only been in your direction. We need rain badly here but I can do without bad storms and lightning strikes!!!! Diane

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  3. Hi Craig and Diane,

    Sorry, I don't think I made it clear in my post that I am currently in the UK (Staffordshire) and not in France. :-(

    Today the weather is a mixture of sunshine and cloud.......

    However I am Welsh where as the saying goes "it rains most days and often all day"!!

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  4. In Belgium that router would have been covered by the fire insurance. Electric appliances that break down due to lighting or any other electrical occurence for that matter, are automatically insured. But you were lucky that the manufacturer accepted the guarantee.
    P.S. No significant rain here. The few drops that fall, dry up before they even hit the ground :((

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  5. Hi Martine,

    We didn't think about using our house insurance, although I suspect we were covered. Sometimes it just isn't 'worth the hassle'. This is just the attitude that insurance companies want in their clients!!

    Our experience claiming for an ipod and camera which were damaged when my son was in India last year, took a great deal of time and effort and wasn't that rewarding. At every stage documentation was lost and had to be resent. They also wanted him to claim under our house insurance rather than his travel policy - and his travel policy was a really high spec one too.

    This we didn't allow!

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  6. That is a good reason why I did not hear the thunder LOL. Re insurance here in France. I claimed for tiles broken and a whole lot of work that I had to do in restoration in the house after a massive hail storm a couple of years ago here. The cheque was in the bank within days, no questions asked, I was impressed. Diane

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  7. In France you can buy a "parafoudre" ... you plug your computer into that and then into the wall (so to speak).

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  8. Thanks for the info, we'll look out for one on our next visit.

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