Do You Unplug Equipment During Thunderstorms?


On one hand it seems like a good idea to unplug audio equipment during thunderstorms. But on the other hand the chances of getting your house hit directly by lightning seem fairly low. Some places get more thunderstorms than others. So I am curious what other people here do. Do you unplug your audio equipment during thunderstorms?

sid-hoff-frenchman

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.