I'm *SO* glad I didn't plug my Beagle into the Livebox

Went to a vide grenier (like a car boot sale) at a nearby town.
When we returned, there was no power. After a moment of examination, it turns out the breaker had tripped following a strike on the phone line.

Here’s the ADSL filter thingy (and the lovely overstated French phone plug):

Inside the Livebox, stuff was rattling around (looks like a capacitor and a filter of some sort). Sadly, the Livephone (had good range) and the walky-radio phone were both toast as well because they were connected to the Livebox. This is a big ol’ house so I’ll need to get a new walky-phone.

Thankfully I picked up an old (and very ancient) Livebox at a vide grenier last year. A bit of a piece of crap, but it works. [a normal ADSL router would only give us Internet, it must be a Livebox for the VoIP phone thanks to Orange’s non-standard implementation]

It appears as if this was something called a “dry storm” that from clouds that don’t look too threatening, severe lighting bolts can appear. Pretty much without warning. I heard (distantly) the lightning that would have toasted the Livebox, it was about 1pm. And, distantly (I mean, like 230km south!) at the same time a poor 40 year old woman was struck down on the beach. There were people all around, the lighting hit her and the others felt nothing. [ news article, in French ]
Methinks the weather is kinda screwed up this year…