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Canada-based Brightex Lightning has incorporated in the United States and opened an office in Charlotte, North Carolina as it prepares to begin marketing to the U.S.-based oil and gas industry its technology solution to address the threat of lightning strikes. Brightex's compound plasma lightning rejection (CPLR) system generates a plasma ion cloud that shields and protects assets inside the protected sphere. The system neutralizes and shields a facility from the effect of normal polarization, said Lee Binns, head of international business development for Brightex, in an interview with Rigzone. The CPLR is used with the fore alarm – which operates...

Prescott Fire Department confirmed 19 firefighters have died while battling the Yarnell Hill fire on Sunday night. They're part of the Prescott Granite Mountain Hot Shots. The wildfire was likely caused by a lightning strike Saturday night. The Yarnell Hill fire, about 35 miles southwest of Prescott, has burned about 1,300 acres and forced the evacuation of 50 homes. The fire started Friday and has not yet burned down any structures, but Sunday night firefighters pushed the blaze back away from communities, hoping to keep the blaze from overtaking any homes. A growing fire in Yarnell forced about 600 residents...

google "boy scouts" and "lightning" to get the story.

Back in Ben Franklin’s day, no one worried about lightning causing a chemical tank to explode or shutting down the electronic controls to a nuclear reactor. Technology has raised the stakes since Franklin invented the lightning rod – lightning-sparked fires caused more than $1 billion in insured homeowners’ losses in 2010 alone, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The costs can be even higher for the oil and gas industry; a 2006 study published in the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries found lightning strikes are the most common cause of accidents involving storage tanks at refineries and...

News hit the Net yesterday afternoon that lightning had struck The Vatican twice, just hours after Pope after Pope Benedict XVI's sudden resignation. As a lightning photographer and weather photo hoax buster, I investigated to see if the photo was real. #PHOTO: Lightning strikes St Peter's dome at #Vatican on day the #Pope announced resignation, by Filippo Monteforte twitter.com/AFP/status/301...— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) February 11, 2013 When the picture first started circulating on Facebook, Meteonetwork Puglia e Basilicata ONLUS (a division of Associazione MeteoNetwork Onlus) and commenting members of the Facebook page thought that the photo might be faked (loose internet...

Explanation: How fast is lightning? Lightning, in fact, moves not only too fast for humans to see, but so fast that humans can't even tell which direction it is moving. The above lightning stroke did not move too fast, however, for this extremely high time resolution video to resolve. Tracking at an incredible 7,207 frames per second, actual time can be seen progressing at the video bottom. The above lightning bolt starts with many simultaneously creating ionized channels branching out from an negatively charged pool of electrons and ions that has somehow been created by drafts and collisions in a...

This wasn't the one-in-a-million strike a Kansas lotto player was hoping for. A Wichita man was hit by lightning on Thursday night just hours after buying three tickets in the record-setting $656 Mega Millions lottery, drawn on Friday. Bill Isles, a volunteer storm spotter for the National Weather Service, even made an eerie quip to a pal about his long odds moments after buying the tickets at a local grocery store. "I've got a better chance of getting struck by lightning" than winning the jackpot, Isles said, according to Reuters. The wannabe mega-millionaire had toted his ham radio into his...

TAMPA — In all he did, Justin Inversso made it a mission to do the work of a higher power, his father, Frank, says. In his job as a lifeguard supervisor at Adventure Island, a job he had held since March, the 21-year-old University of South Florida engineering student not only protected lives, but strived to enrich souls of those around him. "He was a strong young man, conscientious of living his life according to the ways of the Lord," said Frank Inversso, a bailiff with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. "He was a true lifeguard. He was committed to...

There was a small storm moving across the way this morning. With the sun just coming up it was producing a rainbow effect in the storm. So I got my little Kodak camera out and started filming, hoping to catch some of the lightning, too. When I was looking at it frame by frame to see how well one of the lightning strikes showed up, I was surprised with this 3 frame sequence. This bolt of lightning seemed to generate itself in my backyard. The storm was a couple of miles away. Thought it was interesting. Thought I would share.

A couple of second-half goals gave the U.S. a 2-0 win over North Korea and a strong start to their Women's World Cup run. The eighth-ranked North Koreans have the youngest team in the tournament with an average age of 20. Still, their discipline and skill gave the U.S. a lot of trouble in the first half before controversial starter Lauren Cheney justified her selection by heading in the first goal in the 54th minute and defender Rachel Buehler scored a second in the 76th minute. After the match, North Korea manager Kwang Min Kim shocked the congregated press by...

EXCERPT: Barack Hussein Obama ignored Easter yesterday. He issued no statements of any kind, no “Happy Easter”, no nothing. By comparison he has issued glowing, effusive statements of praise for each and every Muslim holiday since he took office. Hasn’t missed one of them. So it is quite interesting that yesterday as believers celebrated the Risen Lord Jesus around the the globe, that the God of Heaven who controls the wind and the weather chose to strike the White House with lightning. Excerpts from http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=4280

Seven deer -- including six huddled in a circle -- were found apparently killed by lightning in a southern Wisconsin farm field, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday. The deer were likely killed Sunday night, said neighbor Randy Lantz, 54. “It’s bizarre,” Lantz said. After neighbors found the deer Monday and called authorities, a Kenosha County Sheriff's deputy on Tuesday went out to the rural field located near Salem, Wis., about 5 miles from the Illinois border, and found the six dead deer lying in a circle with another one a distance away. In the center of the group of six...

Seven deer -- including six huddled in a circle -- were found apparently killed by lightning in a southern Wisconsin farm field, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday. The deer were likely killed Sunday night, said neighbor Randy Lantz, 54. “It’s bizarre,” Lantz said.

This is the moment a lightning bolt appears to strike the Statue of Liberty in New York. New York photographer Jay Fine had spent the night braving the storm in Battery Park City, Manhattan, in a bid to get the perfect picture. Jay spent nearly two hours poised with his camera and took more than 80 shots before striking lucky with this particular bolt of lightning at 8.45pm on 22 September. He said he had been waiting 40 years to get the picture. To capture the shots Jay used a Nikon D300s with 60mm f/2.8 lens on the following...

LONDON (AFP) – Friday the 13th proved suitably unlucky for one 13 year-old boy who was struck by lightning before being taken to hospital -- at 13:13 on the dreaded date. The boy, who has not been named, was treated for a minor burn after being hit along with two others at an air show in Suffolk, eastern England, a spokeswoman said. ... Clarke added that two other people were treated for injuries from lightning burns in the space of twenty minutes, and that all three people were holding umbrellas at the time which "acts as a conductor for electricity."...

DENVER, - A man who was struck by lightning while hiking the highest summit in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park said he is eager to return. Brandon Baker, 31, of Princeton, Minn., said he was atop the 14,259-foot summit of Longs Peak when a storm rolled in Wednesday and he lost consciousness shortly after spotting lightning bolts, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported Friday. "The next thing I knew, I woke up the next morning," Baker said. Baker said he woke up feeling sore and was met on the way down by a camper who came to find him when he did...

A teenager was recovering from a lightning strike that happened while he stood inside his own garage on Wednesday afternoon. Stephon Owens, 15, was just about to push a button on the garage door opener when a surge of electricity shot through the house on Bell Meade drive in Douglas County, his parents told Channel 2 Action News reporter Eric Philips. “They came in here to put the basketball hoop together and ….and that’s when it went through his arm,” said Sabrina Bryan, Owens' mother. The teenager and his father were working to assemble a basketball net when the storm...

A fifth-grade Prosper math teacher whose truck was struck by lightning this weekend said he's going to turn it into a lesson plan. The shock tore up a stretch of road along the Dallas North Tollway near U.S. 380. “We’re going to do the odds on this," said Russell Babb. "I got to figure out with the kids, what the odds are of your teacher getting struck by lightning." Babb, who was driving to meet his brother for lunch, said it sounded like a bomb. Concrete flew everywhere, he said. “It chopped up the cement like a sledgehammer,” he said....