Do You Unplug Equipment During Thunderstorms?

Yes!

I haven't in the past, but it sounds like a great idea!

Yes.

Yes.

I have Whole House protection at the panel with non-sacrificial secondary protection (Furman Elite-20 PFI) at the system (audio, TV).  Normally I don't unplug during thunderstorm unless is starts hitting very close. There is no protection for direct hit so the only remedy is to unplug.

Yes

Your house doesn't have to get hit directly by lightning to have a lightning surge take out your electric panel and/or your equipment and appliances . Disconnect, and get a whole home surge protector installed. Have had lightning strikes close enough that they took out two whole home surge protectors but no damage beyond that. Also, even if you get them you still need surge protection devices where equipment is

On rare occasions.

I absolutely unplug all my gear if there is ANY chance of lightning getting near me!

I don't have any surge protection gear in-line with my audio equipment and I wouldn't rely on it if I did, so I just unplug everything.

I do have my TV, computers, etc. plugged into surge protecting boxes and I don't bother unplugging them.  Cheap stuff compared to my audio gear.

I live in N. Florida and we get pounded regularly during the summer months, but can have thunderstorms any time of the year.

(The coax from the antenna feeding my ham radio gear gets unplugged and thrown out the window in severe storms!)

Yes. Absolutely.

yes

Yes. Absolutely for thunderstorms and lightning.⚡️ 

No. I have a Shunyata conditioner and whole house breaker. 

I had a strike near my house once. Audio system survived but the HDMI port on the TV was fried. DVR it was connected to was OK. Moved cable to another port and I was back in business. I have since moved house and I can’t remember what I did with that TV.

I do when im home and know it is coming.

It may help to preface this by saying I live in South Carolina near the ocean and we have severe storms roll through here yearly.   For this and other reasons I'm paranoid about lightning protection. 

Yes, I turn off my power conditioners and sometimes even my breakers but only when I know well in advance what will happen.  The problem is that about 2/3rds of the power issues this house goes through are not even lightning related.   When it is, sometimes I see my lights flash several seconds before I hear the thunder.  It's already too late.  Sometimes I'm away from home when lightning rolls through.

My point is, yes, I do turn things off (not actually unplugged) but I also rely on state of the art surge protection.  I wrote about my thinking at length here and here.

I have a whole house surge protector. My computers and NAS are connected to UPS devices. I turn off my listening room system, NAS, and computers, and pray everything else is protected. 

yes, but i do it before the thunderstorm

Yes. I lived in South Florida for 15 years where there is insane, end of times lightning (you have no idea), and no way was I taking a chance. All it takes is one nasty strike, and you can kiss your system goodbye.

I live in Tampa, the Lightning capital of the world!! I absolutely unplug during storms, even with much whole house protection... no sense taking the chance

Unless there is something new on the market that I'm not aware of, no surge suppressor, or any similar device, can protect your gear from lightning. It comes in through the ground and is very different than a power surge.

However, most companies advertise that their gear protects against lightning. They're not lying, but you do have to read the fine print. Like you said in your post, its pretty rare to have a direct strike, But its not that rare. It does happen occasionally. As you can imagine, a company that makes power products really wants to advertise that their products have lightning protection. If you read your owners manual, lightning protection works like an insurance policy. You send them whatever information they request, they file it, and if you have a claim, they go by whatever info you sent them. 

These companies know full well that 99 out of 100 customers are not going to go through this process. But its there, so they can claim lightning protection. So, yes. Always unplug everything. Even if you have a surge protector, you really don't want a big surge to run through it. A claims process is never enjoyable.  

It’s the safe thing to do. 

When I lived in a free standing home in the country side, I often would unplug my gear. Now I live in a high-rise apartment tower with multiple lightning rods on the roof, so I don't bother.

Yes, whenever I can. Has anyone looked into Environmental Potentials protection products as sold by VH Audio? I may be thinking like a caveman about strike/surges, but I have a whole house surge protector, and whatever surge capabilities the Shunyayta Typhon 2 has, trying to wear the surge out before it hits and ruins my gear. Can some EE comment on my potentially childlike thoughts? I went to the bars at U of A not the library like the EEs and Architecture students! 

Such a simple question, my answer is nuanced.  Here in South Florida lightning is part of the deal.  Almost every summer afternoon we can expect an electrical storm.  According to our local weather stations every day we will get somewhere over 5,000 lightning strikes in the county.  Tampa has the highest count, but here in Miami, Dade and Palm Beach Counties we are not far behind.  These are violent storms too.  They kill livestock, people, knock down things, set fires, they are no joke.  At the same time, we have to live.  If we ran around unplugging all our stuff every time a storm was coming...well hell we just don't do that.  We have to live and we learn how to know when a storm is getting close and otherwise we just accept the risk.  It is just the way of it down here and if anybody tells you otherwise don't believe them.  When the storm is going to hit though, you either unplug your stuff or plan on buying new stuff.  I have all the surge protection, whole house protection and have consulted with Florida Power & Light experts.  I have the best protection money can buy and the best advice available tells me that there is absolutely no technology that can withstand a direct lightning strike.  So use your head, unplug when a storm is imminent. 

Powerlines are buried in my neighborhood so I do not worry about it. My system is on Furman power strips. 

Yes most manufactures owners manual suggest unplugging all electrical audio equipment.have several power conditioners and surge protection.power outage at least 2 x a wk.been lucky so far.i might lose some sound quality but have not had to repair expensive amps as of yet.enjoy the music and the search

yes

Yes!

Yes if you can.  A direct hit can fry almost everything plugged in but not always in my experience.  One time it did.  Another time it didn’t.  Lightning is an unpredictable phenomenon.  Better safe than sorry.  

Yes, I do.  We have a lot of thunderstorms here in the Tidewater area of Virginia.  I plug all my equipment into a Silver Circle unit, so I only have to unplug that one unit, which makes it a lot easier. 

Used to when I lived in Southern Illinois; in Southern California, what's a thunderstorm?

Yes I live in Montana have a whole home surge protection for the service comes into our meter and yet there was a lightning strike hitting the power line 2 years ago that blew all the fuses on the power poles for miles. The whole surge protection breaker did not trip and fried all of our televisions bedroom sound bar and my recently purchased PS audio m700 monoblocks. I have added a Furman just in case but yes I absolutely unplug now.

My current system is on a dedicated 20 amp circuit supplying power through a hardwired isolation transformer, and then a non-sacrificial  line conditioner/surge protector/voltage regulator. We don't get that many thunder storms in my area, but the the service has an annoying habit of randomly blinking off and on with accompanying brown outs and surges, necessitating the protection I use. 

As one person above said, if there is a ground strike near your house, it raises potential of the ground in the immediate vacinity to incredibly high voltages which feeds back into anything that is connected to the house ground AND POOF

Whole home surge protectors generally prevent a surge on the power phases of the supply, but not on the ground

We had a ground strike on our street and it caused damage in about a dozen houes and the cost came to many thousands and the damage varied widely from one house to the next. Fridges, underfloor, heating, tv, networking devices on surge protectors, nothing was safe. Some houses had house surge protectors.

And our power lines are burried

Regards

My system if plugged into 2 Furman surge protector power strips. I always turn off the strips when storms are present but dont bother unplugging the strips. Takes 2 secs to turn off the strips.

I had lightning strike a tree to the side of my house, it travelled across granite underground to to rebar in my foundations, jumped to internal power, ethernet and coaxial, took out every router, pc, tv, amplifier

Yes even with a whole house surge protector. 

If you’re not home then obviously not possible. So best to have plenty of protection in place (which I do).

Yes.

Power lines buried in my neighborhood as well, still, I presume strikes on power lines somewhere else on my grid could have effect.

Always and when we travel.  Borrowed my brothers NAD amp years ago.  Lightning hit a tree right outside the house.  Fried it. Never again.

Thanks for all the input everyone. Better safe than sorry it would seem in this case.

As an aside to your question, I would encourage everyone to read the fine print in their home insurance policy, as to any limits that may be imposed in the event of a major loss.  My own policy protects my system to the full value of the policy.  No restrictions on the stereo.  I posed the question directly to the insurer, and gave them the $$$ risk should the system be lost to fire, flood, theft and yes, lighting.  I have the answer back from them in writing.  After the event is NOT the time to become an expert on your insurance coverage.  Cheers.

Yes, absolutely!

A little off topic, but here’s a fun site if you like to look at the end results of electricity doing bad things.

https://www.electrical-forensics.com/SurgeSuppressors/SurgeSuppressors.html

Quite a few years ago I lived on the outer banks of N.C. And went through several hurricanes there. Lost one power board in my preamp while I lived there. Sent it back to the manufacturer for repair. The second time the power board went out was because of a power surge to the house, no hurricane involved. I live in an area that is growing quickly and neighborhoods go up quickly. You can be sitting here and the power goes out and five minutes later it comes on with a surge. That was enough that to take that same preamp out again. So this time I found a guy that had some power boards at a reasonable price and I purchased 2. Since that time I keep the preamp unplugged unless it is in use. 

@taoist just reminded me. Used to live near Boston and used DirecTV. Lost a couple of DirecTV receivers, but it wasn’t actually to lightning. It was to wind storms. The wind would cross the surface of the antenna depositing an electron charge. It would eventually build up and ZAP!!  Probably no more of a charge than you get on a dry night when you walk across the carpet and touch something or some one that's grounded.

No lightning, no power surge needed. The solution was installing a coax surge protector. BTW, it was grounded externally. That was not why.

One evening the ex and I, sitting in the TV room, had a bolt hit that side of the house. An arc came out a outlet on the far side of the room, split between us and went in an outlet behind us. Just the proximity to the TV killed it. If it had happened on the other side of the house, in the audio room, I believe it would have killed the system. It was one of the freakiest things I've ever seen.

I always unplug. Seen too many weird occurrences here in Florida (I'm talking about lightning now).