 Home Causes of lightning Effects of lightning Tracking lightning Damages Pictures  Tracking Movie | ||
Photo from chaseday.com
First, and most obvious, is the effects on the phone service. Phone lines are very tall. This gives the leaders a great head start(see the causes page). Since leaders, like water, want to take the most efficient path, high things, especially poles, are struck most often. This can make the pole topple over, and the wires get ripped apart. The phone service(and dial-up modems) are unavailable.
The next effect is on the agriculure. Quite often, in a storm, large groups of cows will huddle under a tree. The tree, being tall, is struck by lightning, and the entire herd is eradicated. This can obviously cost quite a lot of money to the farmer or rancher, and this has caused many of them go entirely broke. For this reason, many farmers make sure that there are no trees in their fields.
Also, this sort of thing can happen to wildlife, only there is no farmer to lose money. Instead, the area's food chain gets thrown out of whack, and for a while, there is a small amount of animals there. On most occaisions, though, everything gets back to normal again.