SpringfieldOhio Electrician
Ask anyone who lived through the May 27, 2019 tornado outbreak: the outage isn't the expensive part. The expensive part arrives with the power coming back on — the surge that rides the restored line, and the smaller surges that pulse through the grid for days after a major event. Springfield's thunderstorm season makes this an annual conversation, not a hypothetical one.
What a surge actually is
A surge is a spike of voltage — hundreds or thousands of volts where your home expects a steady 120 — lasting microseconds. Lightning strikes are the dramatic source, but the everyday sources are closer: grid switching, downed lines reconnecting, and large motors cycling, including your own air conditioner's compressor kicking on and off all summer.
Electronics don't fail only from the big hit. Many die by erosion: dozens of small surges degrading power supplies and circuit boards until one day the TV, the furnace board, or the refrigerator's control module simply doesn't wake up.
Why storm season here is different
west-central Ohio thunderstorms bring intense lightning density, and events like the May 27, 2019 tornado outbreak layered on widespread outages — which means widespread reconnection surges when service restores. Every home on a re-energized line rides the same spike.
February 2021 ice storm taught the harder version of the lesson: days of unstable grid conditions, rolling blackouts, and electrical surges that took out furnaces, well pumps, and appliances across the state. Surge damage is cumulative, and storm years are compounding.
Point-of-use strips: better than nothing, not the answer
The power strip under the desk with the word 'surge' on the box does help — for whatever's plugged into it, and only until its protection is spent. Most strips sacrifice their protective components absorbing hits and keep delivering power with zero protection left, with no indication anything changed.
They also protect nothing hardwired: the HVAC system, the furnace board, the water heater, the range, the well pump. In a Springfield summer, the most expensive electronics in the house are the ones no strip touches.
Whole-home protection at the panel
A whole-home surge protective device installs at the main panel and clamps spikes before they distribute through the house — the first and most important layer. Modern units handle both external surges from the grid and the internal surges your own motors generate.
The layered approach is the standard: panel-level protection for the whole system, quality point-of-use protection for sensitive electronics, and verification that the home's grounding is solid — because every surge device dumps its energy into the ground, and a bad ground wastes the whole investment.
After the storm: what to check
Once power is stable after a major event, walk the house. Test GFCI outlets, check that the HVAC starts and runs normally, verify the water heater and major appliances, and look for electronics that won't power on or behave strangely. Surge damage often shows up as odd behavior before total failure.
If the storm took out your service mast or meter base — common when limbs bring down the service drop — that repair is on the homeowner's side of the meter and needs an electrician before the utility reconnects. That's a call to make early, because everyone else in the neighborhood is making it too.