Lightning!

Carol and I planned to spend the afternoon and early evening working up at the new house. We ditched at the office around 3pm and zoomed up the hill. I quickly got to work on the #$%@* soffits... We were keeping an eye on the sky as the weather was predicted to include some thundershowers. I didn't want to be working on a 26 foot lightning rod (ladder) with all that electricity in the air. After about an hour it started to spit rain so I took the ladders down, put the tools away and generally made sure everything was battened down in anticipation of the storm to come.
We didn't have long to wait... The first lightning bolt hit very close to the house with the attending boom of thunder at almost the exact same time. Soon the house was reverberating with a multitude of cracks and booms and the sky around us lit up like a fireworks display. It was exciting and very scary at the same time. Lightning could be seen striking the valley below the house and even lit up the hill behind us. I was very pleased that we had implemented all the grounding and lightning protection when we installed the solar modules. It was paying off now, as we didn't even get a flicker from our power system. We did hear a couple of clicks and pops when the violent flashes lit up the sky, but everything just kept purring along, just like we designed it to do. Exhilarating!
It was all very intense and by the time we had wolfed down our hot dog supper, we were both ready to hit the road and get out of the area. The lightning was receding but it was followed by torrents of rain that made our driveway slick and slippery.
As we were almost home (back in Knutsford) we received a phone call from Jackie, our realtor and neighbour asking if we were still up on the Range (the Robbins Range, where our house is situated). After telling her that, no, we had left 30 minutes before, she gave us the news that there was a fire raging on the property directly behind ours, no doubt caused by the lightning storm. Her husband and some of the neighbours were going up with a water truck to contain the fire until the forest service could get there to put it out. There was no use us heading back up - we have no lights at the house and it was nearly dark by this time. All we could do was sit and hope that the fire was small and did no real damage around the area.
It's Thrusday morning as I write this. We didn't hear anything else last night so we assume that all is okay and our house is safe. Carol is off to the Western Canada Summer Games this morning - she is a volunteer swimming official. We will take a trip out to check things out after lunch. I will keep you all posted.