I’m not sure whether to take my close calls with lightning as that I am living right or that God’s aim is just a little off when he decides it’s time to teach me a lesson!
I’ll never forget flying at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, returning to the United States from Finland, when suddenly there was a VERY loud boom, and a ball of fire rolled down the aisle in our MD-11 aircraft.
Mind you, I was sitting near one of my dear friends who is blind. She asked, “What was that?!?” Folks, she SAW the light of the fireball it was so bright.
Me and the guy next to me held hands and prayed like we’d never prayed before. I think my prayer was more a chant of “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”
The flight attendants immediately went into crisis mode. This was Finnair, and an odd thing about their attire was that they all wore black leather gloves. Also, Finnish is not the prettiest language on our fair planet, and so everything they said sounded like they were barking orders, even if they were asking if you’d like a cup of tea.
Anyway, they were quickly walking up and down the aisles, I suppose they were looking for any possible damage and getting ready for what ever emergency procedures the passengers might need to prepare for.
It took about 5 minutes — five of the longest minutes of my life — for the pilot to come onto the loudspeaker, and in his broken English said, “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we had a weather occurrence take place, and are in the process of testing all equipment. It does not appear to have damaged the aircraft. Please stand by for further information.”
Well, that was certainly comforting.
Another 10 minutes later, the pilot came back on and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our landing will be delayed approximately 60 minutes so that we may continue to test the equipment as we begin our decent in to New York. Thank you for your patience. Please remain in your seats.”
So we waited, and waited, and waited as we circled off the coast of New York. Finally, we descended and made a safe landing at JFK. What we all noticed as we landed were the emergency vehicles and foam on the tarmac, but by the time we landed, we were so exhausted and mostly had calmed down since we hadn’t disintegrated in mid-air, that it didn’t dawn on many of us that all of that emergency equipment might be for us.
Come to find out…it was for us! The reason we were circling over the ocean so long was because we were dumping our fuel for landing! We also made CNN that day, they showed us landing live on the air — I suppose just in case we crashed, they’d have the exclusive coverage!
So that brings me to last night. I wasn’t really sleeping well anyway, because Amanda has one heck of a cough right now, and since she was born, I still wake up when I hear her down the hallway. It was about 3:30am, and I had dozed off when I heard her crying from a loud boomer that scared her awake, and so I brought her in to sleep the rest of the night with me.
I turned on the TV to see if there were any tornadoes in the area, and there was the hottie weatherman letting us all know that thankfully it was all just a bunch of thunderstorms. Thunderstorms with hail, but at least no tornadoes.
Suddenly, there was that all too familiar loud boom and bright light (just like on the airplane). I grabbed Amanda and we both froze for a few seconds. Amazingly, the electricity did not go off. I got up and walked around the house to see if anything was damaged. I briefly went outside to make sure the house or any trees weren’t on fire and ran back in (I wasn’t going to push my luck!).
When I came back in, I immediately realized what part of the loud crash had been…
I have one of those wooden perpetual calendars that has little wooden blocks you change with each month.
It was now laying on my deep freezer.
The lightning knocked my calendar off the wall! That was the only thing that was out of place.
Unbelievable. I am always amazed at the power of Mother Nature. I respect her and am really thankful that so far, all of my close calls have been met with mercy.
Filed under: Current Events, It Could Only Happen To Me, My Child, On My Radar, Too Bizarre for Words But I Try Anyway, Weather | Tagged: close calls, emergency landing, Finnair, JFK Airport, Justin Bruce, lightning, Mother Nature, New York, Tennessee, thunder, thunderstorms, Weather, WKRN
I can’t believe you missed your chance to reanimate the corpse of Robin Gibb, Frankenstein style. If you don’t use the power of the elements, how will he ever find himself stayin’ alive?
Dear Ron, please go back and study your Gibb Family History 101 and get back to me.
Robin is alive and well.
Heh, and currently performing with some Symphony in concert on HDNet today. What a weird Robin Gibb reference.
I hate lightning strikes. One time when it struck my parent’s house fire shot out of all the electrical outlets and balls of fire rolled out of the overhead light fixtures. It actually struck the electrical transformer outside and ran into the house through the lines. Perhaps this one grounded out through your phone.
I’m glad you guys are OK and didn’t have any damage.
Balls of lightning rolled down our living room wall and scorched our shag carpeting. (Yes, we were groovy in the 70s.) I think it probably happens more than we think.
My family had a friend who was a flight attendant in the 70’s and they had lightening go through their fusalage also. Glad all that was knocked down was the calender, it was definatly a loud evening.
So you think Justin is a hottie.. personally I am a Neil Orne fan, he used to do the weather many many moons ago
saraclark, that’s a good thought…maybe that’s exactly what happened.
bridgett…we were all groovy in the 70s, too…we had brown & gold shag.
weatherchaser, I do remember back in the day when Neil was a weatherman. He was a good one at that. As I told “vandyman” over at NashvilleWx.com, I’m an equal opportunity flirt…they’re all fine-looking gentlemen on the News 2 Weather Team.
Well I thought both Ron’s Robin Gibb comment and your response were funny! Made me snigger aloud.
Ours was avocado and gold. Looked like a Sears kitchen showroom to me, but Mom liked it. Unfortunately, Dad could not be parted from the red plaid Herculon sleeper sofa, so that room gave off a very Herb Tarlek vibe…
He’s still alive… for now.
[please insert dramatic gopher here]
OMG, bridgett, I just laughed out loud at your Herb Tarlek reference.
That’s awesome.
Ron, it has been proven that death cannot conquer Robin…he is protected by the forces of his supernatural vibrato
If I were you, I’d completely rethink my life. Clearly, you were the target, but even God sometimes likes to shoot tequila and toss a storm around to cover the removal of a wayward sheep…he missed. This time.
Dropping in and saying hi! Miss ya.
“we had a weather occurrence take place”
A *weather occurrence …” You gotta love it. Especially since you lived to tell the story.
A college friend of mine was on a small plane piloted by a friend of his. Lightning hit (and took out their external lights) and the pilot threw up his hands and screamed, “I can’t fly this thing” (or something of the kind). This was distressing to the other passengers as he was the only pilot on the plane.
He eventually came around and they all landed safely.
Well that was certainly exciting! Hey, you’re alive, and you’ve got a great story to tell for the rest of your life. : )