The severe thunderstorm that raced through our area Sunday night left it's calling card at Silver Spring.
The pictures to the left show a direct lightning strike to a large Ash tree on the left of 13. The force of the strike split the tree and scattered pieces of the tree up to 100 yards away.
The electricity from the strike followed down the tree and found a near by irrigation sprinkler head shattering the head causing a water leak.
After shattering the sprinkler head the electric surge followed the wires on the sprinkler head to the junction box and destroyed the communication decoder associated with the sprinkler head.As the electric surge dissipated into the earth several other nearby communication decoders were destroyed.
The weather station on the second hole also took a electric surge that knocked out the base irrigation computer in the maintenance facility.
The golf and grounds crew was able to diagnose and fix all the electrical problems the storm created and our irrigation system was 95% operational by Thursday morning.