I grew up in Florida, the lightning capital of the US, and remember having to unplug TVs, VCRs, etc. almost every afternoon during our summer thunderstorms. My parents now have
lightning rods installed underground. So their electronics have become fairly safe from these storms.
The past few weeks have brought record-breaking heat to Charlotte and with that some amazing lightning and thunderstorms. Normally when we have these storms we unplug most of our electronics. Even though we have surge protectors, most surge protectors will not protect from lightning.
Last night my neighborhood had a particularly bad storm from out of nowhere and within the blink of an eye my home computer got fried. This is the second computer that has crashed without a backup. Financial records, photos, videos, all irreplaceable because I have been too busy to make a backup, not that making a backup should take that long. After all I have a CD and DVD burner on the computer. Hopefully I will be able to recover some of the files, but thought it would be a good time to remind everyone that you should always back up important files and don't rely on a surge protector to save you from lightning!
