Thunderbolts and lightning very very frightning

We have had some crazy weather in Oklahoma lately.

Normally bad weather does not scare me, quite the opposite in fact. I am that fool who runs outside during the tornado warning in hopes of catching a glimpse of the twister. I love a good lightning storm, and I always have. I can remember as a kid sitting with on the floor in front of the windows in Wilton looking out as the sky lit up. In an apartment in Fargo I would take my blankets and lay in front of the sliding glass doors so I could get a better view. In Eden Prairie I never wanted to go to the basement because underground you can't see anything. A couple years ago I jumped at the chance to go chasing tornadoes with my cousin's husband who works for the National Weather Service (unfortunately we did not see any). Oklahoma is not for you if you are scared of storms.

Things are different now that Ryder is around. While I am still not scared of storms, I am more cautious. I pay more attention.

The weather folks started talking about bad weather expected here last weekend a week in advance. Anyone who says they didn't know it was coming had to have been under a rock all week. It was all over our news, it was on the national news, it was on the internet - heck mom even heard about it in Minnesota. I packed a tornado survival kit in case we had to seek refuge in the tornado shelter and the house was gone when we came back above ground. We stayed up late on Friday night, and despite the weather radio going off 4 times between midnight and 4 am, nothing happened. We didn't even get rain.

Saturday night I was sleepy from the interruptions of the previous night, but I had a funny feeling. We were under warnings and watches, and there was some particularly hairy stuff going on in other parts of the state and in Kansas and Nebraska. We were supposed to get thunderstorms; some wind, rain, and hail, but they weren't supposed to arrive until 3 or 4 am. I wanted to go to bed, but I had a strange feeling. I was scared. I told Trent about it. I just didn't feel right. Something was off. I went to bed anyway.

Ryder got up for a bottle about 3:30 am. The wind was blowing, but the storms hadn't arrived yet. I put him back in his crib, and I went back to bed. At 4, the storm arrived with its full gusto. There was a flash of lightning so bright it lit up the house like noon on the 4th of July. The crack of thunder the followed was so loud the dishes in the cupboards shook. My first thought was that the house had been hit. Before I even realized I was awake, I was standing in Ryder's room. He had slept through it, he was fine. I stumbled back to bed.

BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHHH!

The most deafening alarm sound you have ever heard starting going off. What on earth was happening? Where was that noise coming from? HOW DO YOU MAKE IT STOP?!?

I met Trent in the hallway, I had Ryder. The siren noise was so loud we couldn't hear each other. It was coming from directly above our heads - right where the doorbell is. If ever there was a time for WTF?! this was it. I went to the security system panel. You know, the one that had not been hooked up since 2006 when I bought the house? The word FIRE was flashing in big, bright red letters on the screen.

BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHHH!

I couldn't smell smoke, but I smelled some odd smell. Trent went up in the attic to check things out. I remembered when I closed on house the people gave me a bunch of booklets and manuals for things in the house, and my only hope was somewhere in that booklet was something about this noisemaker that explained how to make it stop. Amazingly, Ryder was not screaming or crying, both of which I wanted to be doing at this point. I found the booklet and while I could now tell you how to wire the damn thing, no where did it tell you how to turn it off.

BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHHH!

Trent came back down, everything was fine in the attic. He was going outside in the storm to look at the roof and around the house to inspect. I kept looking for a way to make the alarm stop. Eventually I found a page of codes, and I started entering them into the keypad until one of them worked. 1292. Don't EVER forget that number. It was 4:27. That alarm had gone off for almost 30 minutes.

We walked around the house in a daze for a few minutes, I could still smell the strange smell and it seemed to be worse near the cold air return right outside my office (which is the bedroom I sleep in with Ryder most nights). It smelled like burned wires. We turned on the TV long enough to see that the storm had passed, and the next round was expected in another hour. We got Ryder back to sleep and decided to try ourselves.

Sleep did not come for me, which was OK since when the next lightning/thunder combo hit ...

BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHH! BLAHHHHH!

This time the code was entered in less than 10 seconds. This happened twice more during the night.  Ryder got up at 6.

Three days removed from the situation, there are a lot of things I look back on about that night on and wonder what in the hell we were thinking. 1) Why didn't we get out of the house and 2) Why didn't we call 911 when we saw FIRE being the top two. In hindsight, we were lucky as there was no fire, but we didn't KNOW that. We were stupid.

Apparently what they tell me happened is that lightning either struck the house or struck close to the house and traveled into the house on the phone line. It took most everything that was directly connected to the phone line, including a modem, a wireless router, a desktop PC (hardwired to the router), an IP phone (hardwired to the router), a TV receiver, and the entire security system. The phone repair guy was certain that was the smell I smelled - especially near my office since that is where 99% of these things are located. I know we are incredibly lucky that no other appliances or electronics were affected.

As for the smoke detectors ...

Apparently when you purchase a home with a security system, you need to ask more probing questions than I did and not just "opt out" of using it and pretend it doesn't exist. Our smoke detectors are hard wired into the security system and into the phone lines. If the smoke detectors go off (and if you pay them $21.95 a month) and trigger the BLAHHHHH! sound, the security system automatically calls the fire department to your home. If you do not pay the $21.95 a month and the smoke detectors go off, you just get the BLAHHHHH! If your phone line gets struck by lightning,  you get the BLAHHHHHH! for no money and no fire. The security system repair guys were here this morning to assess the damage. They said the whole system is fried. The smoke detectors no longer detect, the security system no longer secures. 1292, you can kiss my ass.

Trent is at Wal-Mart as I type purchasing the old fashion, yet more reliable and less complicated version of smoke detectors that don't require a code and are lightning proof.

What I find most ironic about this whole story is that never, not once, in 6 years of living here, have I burnt a frozen pizza bad enough to have ever heard the BLAHHHHH! sound. That, my friends, is more amazing than the fact that we were struck by lightning!