This shocking photo was submitted by Cate Graber of Trinidad, CO of her 26′ Growing Dome Greenhouse and it immediately caught a lot of attention. It blew away all previous records at 264 likes, 27 comments and nearly 100 shares. This one is going to be tough to top! Some of the fun comments included Karen Howl’s response that “I confess, we were trying to beam it over to our place!!!” and Karen Klebold’s (August 2011 DOTM winner) response “What a great picture. Your tomatoes should be super huge from all that energy.” Thank you Cate and John for capturing and sharing this amazing photo and thank you to their friend Karen for suggesting they enter it.
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This photo brings up an interesting question for those of us in lightning country.
How likely is the dome to be hit by lightning? On the one hand it is rounded and plastic. On the other hand, b/c it is plastic it can likely generate large amounts of static electricity and act as an attractor to lightning strikes.
Should I put a lightning rod on the greenhouse? I have put them on everything else; the garage, the house, the tree next to the house, the solar array…
Growing Spaces Founder, Udgar Parsons has this bit of information to share about lightning:
“I have never heard of a dome being struck by lightning.Lightning generally prefers to discharge to ground via a spikey shape, ie a church steeple, a tree. That’s why they tell you to lie down if caught in the open with lightning around.The Growing Dome does not build up static electricity after it has been rained on or hosed down, but when first built it is very electrostatic.The answer to ‘how likely is the Growing Dome to be hit by lightning?’ would be highly unlikely but anything is possible in this world.”