Before scientific records were kept, ancient humans experienced lightning. Seems it had all kinds of weird effects through the ages. Still does today, but in very different ways. And no, we have not harnessed it. And, there may be other issues. Here’s why.
Observations From Carter Crabtree
By Carter Crabtree
Let’s talk about good old-fashioned lightning. The kind that jumps right out of the sky when you’re not looking.
And did you know? Lightning can also jump from the ground to the sky? It can and it’s the it’s the most dangerous kind of lightning. In short, the stuff is highly unpredictable, especially when it comes a hot spot right near you.
This phenomenon is often taken for granted. As in: “Hell of a storm!” said one. “My TV got toasted!” added another. And, “It was like I was struck by lightning!” Former teenybopper Lou Christie sang about lightning hitting him along time ago. In this case, it had to with young sex and active hormones.
Chances are very high you’ve been caught in a bad thunderstorm here or there. If you live in Florida, it’s pretty much 100% guaranteed, per year. Yessir.
It’s been said many times that Florida is the lightning capitol of the world. That’s not quite true. While Florida gets the nod as the lightning capitol of The United States, Venezuela is the worldwide leader.
The chances of lightning appearing somewhere near you are also pretty high. Personally, I call it the ‘Crack-Boom Factor’.
It goes something like this: If you’ve ever been reallyclose to a lightning strike, you hear the actual crack/scary noise from the lightning bolt(s), followed by a most-definite, very loud boom. It’s the time interval between the crack and the boom that tells the story. It’s a crude measurement of how close that son-of-a-bitch hit the Earth. As in, near you.
Lightning bolt hits tree next to home. Note small secondary strike hitting the power pole to the left (Courtesy OSHA)
One other thing, the thunder rolls away from, not at you.
As a Florida Boy, I lost count of my personal crack-booms many decades ago.
The closest happened to me in a parking lot as I was about the get out of my car one fine morning. More on that in a moment .
Here’s the real news, friends: If there’s a lightning flash and you don’t hear a boom rolling away. Then you’ve likely been killed (as in dead) immediately or, if you’re lucky, badly injured or shaken like there was no tomorrow.
You just got struck by lightning. Period. You don’t get to say, “Hold my beer.”
This may sound a bit funny. But it’s not.
A man who was my mother’s boss in the 1960’s was struck and killed by lightning while standing under a tree during a storm. He wasn’t the only one standing there.
My mom cried for a week. It left me deeply affected. Then my own stories unfolded. I offer a basic one here today. As it turns out, I experienced a number of strange moments involving lightning.
More will follow this one.
This tree was split into pieces when lightning hit.
I mentioned earlier about a close hit as I was exiting my Bronze/copper 1970 Pontiac Fire bird, which belonged to my dad. He got another car. He sent the Pontiac, along with me, and a couple of dollars to the The University of South Florida. Basic go-get-em, chick-magnet material.
If I recall correctly, he said, “Good luck, son.” Or some similar sage wisdom advice du jour. Yep. All seemed normal.
One day, I had just rolled into USF and was about the exit my snazzy ride when lightning struck the pavement about two feet away from the driver’s side door. As in, my driver’s side with me inside the car.
For a split second, everything went white. Then, gone. Pieces of asphalt from the parking lot rained down on my car and those around me. Sounded like popcorn. Seems I almost got popped myself.
I sat there, fairly stunned, I’d say. Then I opened the door, slowly. It wasn’t a dream or some night-before irrational exuberance.
I stood up and looked around at the parking lot next to to The College of Arts & Letters. “Wow, dude. That really just happened.” Something like that.
On the hood, top, and trunk of my bronze Fire Bird, I noted chunks of parking lot asphalt, of all sizes, had fallen all over the fucking place.
There was a freshly-blasted hole in the pavement next to me. I’d call it about 6 inches around and several inches deep. I stared at it. It gave me what sometimes is known as ‘pause’.
I looked around. In a circle of about 50 feet, other fans of the Arts and Letters building got their own taste this lightning strike, I’d say. The owners just weren’t there to see it in person.
I went to class and didn’t say anything to anyone. But, I sure felt strange.
After class, I did an arm-swipe to get the larger chunks of parking lot off the Pontiac’s hood and left. As I pulled away, I recall my empty parking spot with all these others cars coated in asphalt.
I sometimes have wondered, if other commuters later wondered, what happened to the person who was parked in that spot?
Here today, gone today.
A ground-to-sky lightning event. This came from a radio tower, but it can easily come from the ground you’re on, or the tree you’re under. (Courtesy: Government of Canada & James Syme)
A lightning bolt hits the space shuttle launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla. (NASA)
This story was originally published on September 13, 2024.
An earlier photo of the Blue Sink sans green pond scum.(Courtesy: Southwest Florida Water Management District)
It all started with a bad storm and a dumpster. This is what happened. What a surprise. Not.
By Carter Crabtree
Here’s how to totally ruin a true Florida treasure with pretty much no effort, at all. As a matter of course, it involves various typical Florida specialties such as: people, money, etc. Pretty easy to fuck things up, it seems. Etc.
For many long-time Floridians, it’s another in a string of blunder-laden stories that have compromised many of the state’s natural wonders. Things you just can’t buy. Again, you just…can’t…buy.
This particular piece of reckless debauchery is quite special, even to me, a certifiable Florida lunatic-long-timer.
If you’ve lived in the Tampa area for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve driven near or through the North Tampa intersection Florida & Fowler Avenue in the land of sprawling car dealerships, mixed with other things, to the north and south. Oop. Almost forgot. It’s also near Interstate 275, less than a mile away. Machines zipping right on by and into the future.
Nothing unique at all about the neighborhood. Pretty much like any other intersection surrounded by purveyors of allegedly fine automobiles, that come in all shapes, sizes, and prices.
It’s what’s nearby that makes the area strangely unique and sad. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be anything like it in the rest of the continental United States, according to an expert who specializes in such things.
Near the Florida-Fowler intersection is a prehistoric wonder. It’s known as the Blue Sink Complex. The main attraction is the Blue Sink — a large sinkhole about one hundred feet in diameter. But, seems nobody knows about it. With the exception of those, who actually know about it.
The good news: it’s a treasure in our own backyard. The bad news: The Blue Sink was literally trashed not too many decades ago. There is a plan to restore it in a man-made kind of way. But it won’t be cheap.
Former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco is said to have visited the Blue Sink when he was much younger and told an amazing story. More on that later.
The reason all of this happened, is kinda dumbfounding:
So. What is the Blue Sink?
I first learned about it from David Knight, who occasionally did some work at my Forest Hills home, which is not far from the Blue Sink. Knight grew up in Forest Hills back in the 1950’s and 60’s.
One day, by chance, he started describing a body of water near the Honda dealership on Florida Avenue. He called it the Blue Sink. He said he believed it was an ancient sinkhole, but with a difference.
The water in it was once a pure, azure blue. He said the color was nothing like what you would see in a lake or river. This water was crystal clear. I learned the blue color was due to refraction of the sunlight.
He said as a young man, David said he would go there and find Indian arrowheads and other ancient artifacts.
But he said it’s no longer blue at all. He said something about a dumpster falling into it. He added it’s fenced off and you can’t get at it these days.
I was intrigued.
Some months later, I started thinking about it again and did some poking around on…yes… the Internet.
There wasn’t a whole lot of information out there, but it was enough to ratchet up my interest a notch or two.
Enter Tampa engineer and expert hydrologist Peter Schroeder. What he had to say put my question machine way in the red.
“The Blue Sink is part of a highly interesting, rather unique hydro-geological feature in the entire country in that not only is it a sink, implying that water would disappear into it like a drain in the bathtub.” Schroeder continued, “The unique part is the blue part because, as people in Florida well know, the surface water is normally brown or nearly black.” Schroeder said.
Schroeder ran his own consulting business and has spearheaded hydro-logical projects for the City of Tampa and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
He said about 300 feet to the north of the sinkhole is a spring. It, in turn, feeds the Blue Sink, providing amazingly pure water which accounted for the clear, blue color.
Schroeder said the water from the Blue Sink was so pure it was readily drinkable. “You could bottle it and sell it,” he said.
The Blue Sink (left) in a recent satellite photo. Note the corner of automobile dealership next to the ancient sinkhole. It ain’t blue anymore. (Image from Google Earth)
But there’s much more.
The Blue Sink is connected via “plumbing” to a series of tunnels and other sinkholes. One tunnel runs several miles to the south along Tampa’s Nebraska Avenue to Sulphur Springs at the bank of the Hillsborough River, Schroeder said. Water from there feeds into Tampa’s well-known Hillsborough River.
As an aside, Sulphur Springs was a genuine attraction for locals and tourists alike in the early 20th century,
At this juncture, it’s important to point out that the Blue Sink has another water source known as Curiosity Creek, which flows down from the north in Hillsborough and Pasco Counties.
In short, you have a spring and another water source feeding a sinkhole which, through underground tunnels, ultimately feeds another distant spring and the Hillsborough River.
You just don’t see that every day, according to Schroeder.
He said there are stories, one of them from former Mayor Greco, of oranges and grapefruit being tossed into the Blue Sink and turning up in Sulphur Springs, at the River. A very popular tourist stop in the early 1900s.
Sulphur Springs In the early 1920s.
Seems the Blue Sink was a ‘secret spot’ in the earlier 1900s, as well. In today’s terms, it sounds like locals went there to just hang out. Probably plenty of alcohol and cigarettes for all. But, no magic mushrooms. Damn.
And there’s even more.
Professional cave divers have explored portions of the underground tunnels. In one instance, they made it some 2,000 feet into one tunnel. That’s right. 2000 feet. Imagine driving around in a garden-variety metro area knowing there’s a cave diver somewhere under the next traffic light.
Schroeder pointed out one particular discovery down below the streets of Tampa. He called it ‘The Terminal Room’. Good name, too. As it turned out, a number of underground tunnels joined together there, like a train station terminal, he said. Big difference: Just flashlights and pure, unadulterated darkness. No people. No trains, whatsoever.
Sounded eerie as fucking hell, to me.
Other nearby sinkholes areconnected to this ‘grid’ of tunnels and they have names like Orchid, Jasmine, and Alaska (named for nearby Tampa streets). BTW. Alaska. Really?
In 1972, something very bad happened to the Blue Sink.
The owners of what was then a Chevrolet dealership were required to build a retention pond to contain runoff from the parking lot. At the edge of a dam, next to the Blue Sink, was a dumpster, Schroeder said. During an especially bad Florida rainstorm, the dam collapsed and the dumpster slid into the sink, partially blocking its ‘plumbing.’
My handyman David was…right on. Dammit.
The Blue Sink was blocked, but not completely.
Then in 1974, the City of Tampa grabbed hold of some nearby property for a water/sewage transfer plant. Workers dug a 30-foot deep hole as part of the project. This involved excavating lime stone, which became rather, let’s say, dusty. Like cement.
The ground-up lime stone was dumped into Curiosity Creek, Schroeder said.
Remember Curiosity Creek from earlier?
“So that went down to [the] Blue Sink and basically sealed the final fate of Blue Sink. It’s like liquid concrete sealing up the entire outflow,” he said.
After a time, the Blue Sink wasn’t blue anymore.
I had to see this in person. Schroeder’s assistant led me into the area.
We had only traveled a few steps when a strong feeling of ‘prehistoric times’ came over me. We were in a fairly heavily wooded area pot-marked with various sinkholes, some of them very large. The water they contained had a mighty fine layer of green pond scum adorning the surfaces. Yum.
I felt like a time traveler. I thought a woolly mammoth or a sabre tiger might be around the bend.
The very ill-defined trail we were on was reasonably slippery and part of it came right to the edge of a large sinkhole with that green pond scum-covered water…about 20 feet below me. It gave me great pause.
After about 15 or so minutes of walking, there is was. The Blue Sink. It was much larger than I had imagined.
And it definitely was not blue. That green pond scum covered most of the surface, too.
I tried to imagine.
Schroeder had confirmed David Knight’s story about the Indian artifacts. He said engineers found many when they partially drained the sink during some testing.
Standing there at the edge of the Blue Sink, I stared for time at the prehistoric site and tried to imagine the past.
Then it was time to go. On the way back I slipped a bit and almost fell into that big-ass sinkhole I mentioned earlier. I was visited by a brief moment of pure, unadulterated terror. I got over it.
As we finally approached the gate where we began our hike, something big bolted through the woods. I don’t know what it was, but it was big.
Schroeder later told me deer had recently been spotted in there. Deer? In Forest Hills?
What next for the Blue Sink? Its level is constantly monitored by the Southwest Florida Water Management District via measuring equipment and a radio transponder.
Can it be restored?
“Yes,” Schroeder said. But it’s not a very happy fix and the plan costs millions.
It involves using man-made pipelines to reconnect the sink to its system of tunnels.
A driving force behind the plan is the current condition of the water in the Hillsborough River in the Sulphur Springs area, where salt water intrusion from Tampa Bay is a problem.
Fresh water from the Blue Sink Complex supposedly will help to alleviate that.The big remains, will the Blue Sink ever become blue again?
