After all the heat and humidity last week, a thunderstorm late Friday afternoon was very welcome. It had being raining hard for the last hour by the time I got home from work. I had just walked in the kitchen and was being mobbed by the girls – even Peanut scrambles as quickly as she can to greet me now (its a great age) – when there was a loud sizzle, the lights went out, and a loud crack of thunder. A second later, some of the lights came back on.

From what I’ve been able to figure out after the fact, lightning must have struck the old windmill. There’s an electrical line that runs from the house to the tool shed next to the windmill that uses the windmill as a post. Judging by the damage I’m guessing the voltage carried into the tool shed and feed back into the electrical box in the house.

I spent the next 30 minutes changing blown fuses by flashlight. And asking myself why nobody labeled the fuses on the fuse box when it was installed – something else I should add to my list. (If you’re not familiar with how a normal fuse is supposed to look, the center window is supposed to be clear so you can see the fuse element, not toasty brown.) Once I had the fuses swapped out, it was time for start looking at individual items that still weren’t working – mainly lights. There was enough of a power surge to blow out a half dozen light bulbs – basically all of the CFLs that were on at the time.

Time will tell if any of the appliances will take a hit from the surge. One deep freezer is full of meat and the other is full of garden produce, so now’s not the time for them to go on the fritz. The surge protector on the TV seems to have done it’s job. It’s the first time I’ve ever burned one of them up. As far as the tool shed goes, it looks like I’ll need to do some rewiring. I replaced the fuses and turned the lights on in there over the weekend only to hear the wiring sizzle and pop. I’m guessing the wiring melted and, to put it technically, things are touching that shouldn’t be touching.

At least we got some much needed rain out of it – almost 3 inches. The pasture should stay green well into fall now.