Wednesday, September 27

This Timelapse of Lightning Striking SF’s Sutro Tower Is Wild

Mother Nature lit up the skies around the San Francisco Bay Area Tuesday — electrifying local structures, like SF’s Sutro Tower.

The Bay Area has again been hammered by another atmospheric river that began rolling in late Monday morning.  By Tuesday, hail and strong gusts of winds were reported throughout San Francisco. (Trash bins became mesmerizing dancers as they footed along the street, pushed by the wind; people [like myself] had to do a double take when ice pellets began building up in outdoor flower pots.)

Among the early week’s weather extremes was lightning jolting parts of Northern California. And a shared timelapse showing lighting hitting the fork-like prongs of San Francisco’s Sutro Towers.

“Don’t go licking [SutroTower] today,” Kelley Cutler sheepishly writes in a tweet including a gorgeously filmed timelapse-turned-GIF showing at least one lighting bolt strike the tower, which was built in 1971. “Trust me on this.”

Similarly, an image captured by Twitter user Alexander Polis, who also took a video of the lightning hitting the tower, made a still photo of the strike, showing lightning hitting the tower.

As KTVU noted, Twitter user @sanandreafault then shared the image in a tweet with the caption: “U ok @SutroTower?” 

The avatar behind the “Sutro Tower” account then commented, “I am ok friend. Thanks for taking the storm off.”

Sutro Tower also has a humanizing, boundary-setting commentary on Cutler’s tweet — “I would say don’t lick me in general.”
Consent is hot; this 977-foot-tall radio tower knows this — even after being electrocuted.

Feature image: Courtesy of Twitter via Kelley Cutler

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