Circuit Breakers fail in an electrical storm

[DWalt]

Here in San Antonio we had a near-record setting severe electrical storm overnight with heavy rainfall, 3” to 8”, and many areas were flooded. The strange thing was this morning, most of our power was out. This was because five of the house circuit breakers were tripped. Of those, two circuit breakers (twin 20 amp breakers) were completely inoperative, would not reset, and I had to replace them this morning. Fortunately, I had two spare 2020 breakers. This is the only time I remember having anything like that happen, having a storm trip multiple circuit breakers and burn out two of them. Any similar experiences and explanations why that could happen?

TV news just reported four flash flood deaths and two missing persons. Many drowned cars. 11000 recorded lightning strikes. I did not know that there was such a thing as counting lightning strikes.

 

[Rule3]

They did their job. Had a power surge and they tripped and fried.,

 

[madmikeb]

One thing that surprised me about Arizona is my breaker box is on an outside wall! I did have breakers trip during monsoon storms last summer, they didn't burn out though, I just flipped them back on.

 

[Tom Beavert]

In our part of Arizona fire dept requires outside power shutoff for their safety.
Tom B

 

[white cloud]

Serious thunder storms are sort of normal here. I put a Square D surge protector on the outside service panel board. I also put surge protectors on all sensitive stuff including the two heat pumps.

 

[LVSteve]

In our part of Arizona fire dept requires outside power shutoff for their safety.
Tom B

Same in the Vegas valley. Add to that all our natural gas supplies pass through a gadget that shuts off the supply in the event of a severe earthquake. The experts say with have a magnitude 6 lurking under the mountains between us and Lake Mead.

 

[SMSgt]

Living in the land of lightning here in S. FL, I've never had a breaker pop during a storm, not even when lightning struck and killed a beautiful oak in my back yard. It exploded bark into my neighbor's yard.

 

[LVSteve]

Here in San Antonio we had a near-record setting severe electrical storm overnight with heavy rainfall, 3” to 8”, and many areas were flooded. The strange thing was this morning, most of our power was out. This was because five of the house circuit breakers were tripped. Of those, two circuit breakers (twin 20 amp breakers) were completely inoperative, would not reset, and I had to replace them this morning. Fortunately, I had two spare 2020 breakers. This is the only time I remember having anything like that happen, having a storm trip multiple circuit breakers and burn out two of them. Any similar experiences and explanations why that could happen?

TV news just reported four flash flood deaths and two missing persons. Many drowned cars. 11000 recorded lightning strikes. I did not know that there was such a thing as counting lightning strikes.

Counting lightning is a thing. They use an RF detection system.

As for the damage lightning can do to an electrical/electronic system, it is very unpredictable. Back in England the site I worked in was hit twice (different storms) while I worked there. First time it was an observed strike on one of our building's lightning rods. We had to replace one serial data line driver/receiver that went to another building. The second time, it seems the lightning hit the ground line in a concrete conduit between my building and the next. Despite everything in the building being shut down and the breakers thrown, I spent days replacing handfuls of TTL chips in various pieces of equipment. Best guess was that the lightning got into the earth side of the supply and "shook it", leading to all kinds of strange and unsurvivable potentials in the equipment. Ground ain't necessarily ground anymore when you apply the voltage and current of a lightning strike.

 

[djohns6]

Ground ain't necessarily ground anymore when you apply the voltage and current of a lightning strike.

Exactly right . A lot of things come into play when a grounding system is trying to dissipate a fault that is in the thousands and tens of thousands of amps . If it's a direct hit , lightning usually wins .

 

[rwsmith]

Here in San Antonio we had a near-record setting severe electrical storm overnight with heavy rainfall, 3” to 8”, and many areas were flooded. The strange thing was this morning, most of our power was out. This was because five of the house circuit breakers were tripped. Of those, two circuit breakers (twin 20 amp breakers) were completely inoperative, would not reset, and I had to replace them this morning. Fortunately, I had two spare 2020 breakers. This is the only time I remember having anything like that happen, having a storm trip multiple circuit breakers and burn out two of them. Any similar experiences and explanations why that could happen?

TV news just reported four flash flood deaths and two missing persons. Many drowned cars. 11000 recorded lightning strikes. I did not know that there was such a thing as counting lightning strikes.

I 'liked' your post, but not because I liked it. I feel that very severe weather will become more and more common unless some serious climate changes reverse the trend. It probablly won't happen in our lifetime. So I hate to speculate how bad it's going to get. About 8 months ago we had a storm that resulted in (two I think) houses being condemned in our neighborhood. They were pulling huge trees out of people's yards with cranes for months afterward. There were trees across the interstate.

We get severe lightning and high wind much more frequently. A lot of T-storms but a couple times a month they are alarmingly powerful and take down trees and structures. The effects haven't been widespread, but very random and spotty.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I'm afraid that we in for more and worse,

 

[WR Moore]

Putting the entrance panel outside so the FD can turn off the power seems strange. Pulling the meter was the standard method in most other states. OK, IIRC, the new digital meters make that an issue as the power company needs to get involved in reinstallation, but that still seems to be a non-issue.

 

[Rule3]

Putting the entrance panel outside so the FD can turn off the power seems strange. Pulling the meter was the standard method in most other states. OK, IIRC, the new digital meters make that an issue as the power company needs to get involved in reinstallation, but that still seems to be a non-issue.

In Fl the breaker panel is usually in the garage but there is also a main on the outside where the power comes it, Shut the whole system down outside or inside.

 

[wproct]

I 'liked' your post, but not because I liked it. I feel that very severe weather will become more and more common unless some serious climate changes reverse the trend. It probablly won't happen in our lifetime. So I hate to speculate how bad it's going to get. About 8 months ago we had a storm that resulted in (two I think) houses being condemned in our neighborhood. They were pulling huge trees out of people's yards with cranes for months afterward. There were trees across the interstate.

We get severe lightning and high wind much more frequently. A lot of T-storms but a couple times a month they are alarmingly powerful and take down trees and structures. The effects haven't been widespread, but very random and spotty.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I'm afraid that we in for more and worse,

I agree totally. Some will say it's just a cycle thing. My folks used to talk of the dust storms in the 1930's, but I think it's a definite change.