Cloud bumping morning

It was very stormy in northern parts of Aotearoa New Zealand this morning and into the afternoon. It brought very heavy rain, wind, thunder, and it was dark. In fact, it was so dark at one point that my solar panels were generating NO electricity—my house was 100% powered by the electricity company (by midday or so, I was generating all or most of my own power again).

This morning I heard some thunder and suddenly remembered when I was really little and my mother told me thunder was clouds bumping into each other. I believed her, and wondered why those clouds were so annoying—and I was a little bit less scared of thunder, so I guess her tale worked?

Nowadays, I’m a bit more cautious. I unplugged the aerial from my Android box (it receives and decodes the digital UHF TV signals; it's also still scheduled to be its own topic). A few weeks ago, I had my aerial and internal splitter replaced (one of many things I never got around to mentioning on the blog). I also had a signal amplifier that didn’t seem to work any more, so I disconnected it. Everything stopped working after a very brief thunder storm.

The other day, I plugged the signal amplifier back in (I live in an area of Kirikiriroa Hamilton where the TV signals are dodgy, and, it seems obvious to me, I need a signal amplifier). I noticed the “Surge” light was no longer on. The amplifier was only a year or two old, so it’s unlikely the LED light simply burned out, so, what if there was a surge down the antenna lead caused by that earlier storm? That’s why I unplugged the antenna lead today. Might’ve been totally unnecessary, but…

I decided I wasn’t going anywhere today. I don’t like thunderstorms under the best of circumstances, and I certainly wasn't going out in one. My mama didn’t raise no dumb babies, obviously: I eventually worked out that thunder wasn’t clouds bumping into each other. At least, I’m pretty sure they’re not.