Tuesday
San Jose Mercury News
September 25, 2001
Section: B, The Valley
http://www.bayarea.com/news

Freak Storm Strikes:

LIGHTNING KNOCKS OUT POWER TO 32,000 HOMES, CAUSES SMOKE, FIRE
--Insert night shot of San Francisco with four visible lightning bolts raining down--

According to SJMN, there were about 1,500 lightning strikes between the hours of 5 and 8PM PST throughout Northern and central California. The storm created outages in thousands of homes. A palm tree caught fire in Campbell as well as a redwood tree in West San Jose. Power lines collapsed, and the outages created some alarms to set off.

I had no idea the storm was that bad. I've witnessed maybe two or three storms with lightning and thunder before, so I thought nothing of it. At times, I could hear objects in my basement rattling from the thunder; it was so cool, so new to me! Then, #everything advised me to shut down and unplug things lest I want stuff to explode. Again, not being used to storms to such a degree as this, I thought nothing of it. I quickly changed my mind, though. I heard this loud metal clanking noise and a very brilliant light came into my basement. All of the previous lightning bolts I could not see from my basement window with its blinds closed. After the loud noise, a bunch of alarms went off. So, I quickly shut down and went upstairs. We checked the TV for the news, but the news channel was out of service. So, for the rest of the night, until the storm calmed down, I read and napped while looking out the window occasionally at the impressive lightning.

the end