roof pool, Landmark Tower. March 2011
[from FB post: July 27, 2011]
Just talked to the housekeeper in Singapore. Lightening stuck one of the potted trees (big ceramic pot) on the pool deck and not only is the tree BLACK but it totally changed the color of the pot! Holy S..t! I guess I'll make sure NOT to be there when a storm is even APPROACHING.
I actually love watching lightening. When I was a kid, we would sit on the back porch in summer and watch storms roll over the fields behind the house. I credit my Mom with treating it as something special and wonderful so I didn't feel afraid. I actually was thrilled to hear the air ripped apart and the tremendous boom that followed that sometimes shook the house. Mom and I would just say "woooow". I grew up never feeling afraid of thunderclaps and lightning.
Then many years later I moved to Singapore.
I read somewhere that Singapore had the most lightning fatalities per capita in the world. I could believe it. Nearly on the equator, huge tropical thunderstorms would build up and massive downpours with ear splitting thunderclaps were usual. Singaporeans weren't afraid of a little rain, but of lightning? They took cover during a bad electrical storm. For good reason, too. The lightning strikes in Singapore were like something out of a sci-fi movie - they were terrifying.
Still, none of it came home to me until we lived in the Landmark Tower penthouse with its own small swimming pool on the roof. I had decorated the pool area with a few potted plants to make it less stark. There were two lovely trees I picked out whose trunks had been trained (with use of a metal wire) to spiral upward. They were rooted in two substantial brown ceramic pots. Being on the top of a high rise on a hill near one of the high points on the island, when it stormed, it was quite the show (even a little unnerving).
One evening Brian heard a huge clap of thunder up by the pool. After the storm passed, he investigated, but didn't see anything unusual because it was nighttime. Actually, one of the trees by the pool had been hit by lightning! The next day GNW, our friend and cleaning guy, came to tidy up and sent me an message from the roof deck (I was back in Milford). He asked what had happened to one of the potted trees. The ceramic pot had gone total BLACK, and the tree trunk was scorched black, too! The needles on the tree (it was a kind of evergreen) just crumbled off to the touch like an old Christmas tree. A process that might have taken a month had we just left the tree un-watered was accomplished in one blinding and brutal second. It terrified me to realize THAT was how powerful one bolt of lightning actually was. On my visit to Singapore shortly after I saw it for myself - it was cartoonlike the way the tree had been singed.
We opted to replace those trees with other plants in plastic pots that did not have metal around their trunks. There were no more issues with lightning afterward, but I had gained a healthy respect for its power.
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