When Wisconsin experiences problems related to the weather, it is usually an indirect result of snow, whether it has caused a driver to spin out of control or wreaking some other kind of havoc. Last week, it was not snow, but, rather, a lightning strike, that caused problems in Milwaukee (or, to be precise, Sullivan, a village located in Jefferson County). That lightning temporarily took the National Weather Service’s radar offline after destroying its surge protector. Without the surge protector, serious damage would have occurred, and the radar would not have been up and running very quickly.
Steve Davis (News - Alert), of the National Weather Service’s Sullivan office, told Madison.com’s Bill Novak, “It (the surge protector) did its job and was destroyed, but it saved the radar from serious damage.” Later, he announced that the radar was back in service.
This incident offers an important reminder that, without the proper protection, a lighting strike can cause a great deal of damage. It is important to use surge protection, like the solutions offered by Minuteman Power Technologies: MMS surge protectors and LineGard data line surge.
Earlier this week, lightning struck at BWI Airport in Baltimore, Maryland, delaying flights overnight. Although lightning is often innocuous, when it does cause damage, it can do a great deal of it, so it is better to be safe than sorry. Not having the proper protection can result in frustration and headaches, but, for businesses or anyone in the spotlight or the public eye, it can also result in financial loss, embarrassment, and a customer service or PR nightmare. Power protection is an important consideration for any business (just ask the Superdome, which found out the hard way—during the Super Bowl, as the eyes of the entire nation tuned in to see their lights go out when their system became overworked).