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
“On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.” – The Flying Burrito Brothers
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 top 40 tune involving young people and over-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.
Truly Trashed Treasure: Florida’s Blue Sink Complex
An earlier photo of the Blue Sink with no green pond scum, which normally covers it. Also missing: clear blue water. (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 C. Crabtree
Author’s note: I tried to find an early photo of the Blue Sink while working on this. Apparently they are ‘as rare as hen’s teeth’. Even the main guy interviewed for this piece did not have one. If someone out there does, I’d sure love a photo scan.
_______________
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, over-development, etc. Just another fairly easy way to fuck things up in The Sunshine State, it seems.
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, especially to me, a multi-generational, certifiable, Florida lunatic.
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 intersections of Florida & Fowler Avenues, in the land of sprawling car dealerships That, mixed with ‘other’ storefronts, to the north and to the south. It’s also less than a mile from Interstate 275.
Modern machines zipping right on by, and into Tampa’s future. Forget the past. Okay?
Nothing unique at all about this 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 itin the rest of the continental United States, according to an expert who specializes in such things.
Tampa Honda dealership (left circle) and the intersection of Fowler Avenue & Interstate 275.
Near the Florida-Fowler intersection is a prehistoric wonder. It’s the main player in this sad story. It’s part of what is called the ‘Blue Sink Complex’. It’s main attraction is a large ‘blue’ sinkhole about one hundred feet in diameter. Seems nobody knows much about it. With the exception of those, who actually know about it.
To be sure, there are many ‘blue sinks’ throughout Florida. However, this once is fantastically unique.
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 ain’t be cheap nor pretty.
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 somewhat dumbfounding, at least to me.
What is the Blue Sink Complex?
I first learned about it from David Knight, who occasionally did some work at my Forest Hills home, which is not far from this particular Blue Sink. Knight grew up in Forest Hills back in the early 1950’s and offerd some revelations, at least to me.
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. The blue color was due to refraction of the sunlight.
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. 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.
Enter Tampa engineer and expert hydrologist Peter Schroeder. What he had to say put my question machine way into the Red Zone.
“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, among others.
He said several hundred feet to the northwest of the sinkhole is a natural spring. It, in turn, feeds the Blue Sink, providing amazingly pure water which helped account 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.
There’s more.
This particular Blue Sink is connected via “plumbing” to a series of tunnels and other sinkholes. One tunnel runs several miles to the south near Tampa’s Nebraska Avenue to Sulphur Springs at the bank of the Hillsborough River, Schroeder said. Water from the Blue Sink, fed into Tampa’s well-known Hillsborough River.
As an aside, Sulphur Springs was a genuine, popular attraction for locals and tourists alike in the early 20th century,
At this point, it’s very important to point out that the Blue Sink has another water source known as ‘Curiosity Creek’, which is narrow and flows down from the north through Hillsborough and Pasco Counties.
In short, you have a spring and another water source feeding the Blue Sink which, through underground tunnels, ultimately feeds other sinkholes (not sinks) and ultimately, the Hillsborough River.
You just don’t see that every day, according to Schroeder.
He said there are stories, one of them from former Tampa Mayor Greco, of oranges and grapefruit being tossed into the Blue Sink and turning up in Sulphur Springs, right next to the river. Sulphur Springs was a very popular tourist stop in the early 1900s.
Sulphur Springs In the early 1920s.
Seems the nearby Blue Sink was a ‘secret spot’ for locals in the earlier 1900s. They went there to just hang out. Probably plenty of alcohol and cigars/cigarettes for all. And who knows what happened under the light of a silvery moon?
There’s 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 turns out, a number of underground tunnels join together there, like a train station terminal, he said. Big difference: Just flashlights and pure, unadulterated blakness, No people. No trains, whatsoever. Just very dark silence.
Sounded fucking eerie as hell, to me.
Other nearby sinkholes areconnected to this ‘grid’ of tunnels and some 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 newborn car dealership were required to build a retention pond to contain runoff from the parking lot. At the edge of a dam, and right 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 Blue 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 transfer pumping station. Workers dug a 30-foot deep hole as part of the project. This involved excavating limestone, which became, let’s say, rather dusty. Like cement.
The ground-up limestone 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 the Blue Sink. It’s like liquid concrete sealing up the entire outflow,” he said.
After a time, the Blue Sink wasn’t blue anymore.
The Blue Sink (left) in a recent satellite photo. Note the corner of the automobile (Honda) dealership next to the ancient sinkhole. It ain’t blue anymore. (Image from Google Earth)
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 other, various sinkholes, some of them quite large. The water they contained had a terrific layer of green pond scum adorning the surfaces. Yum.
I felt like a time traveler. I thought a woolly mammoth or a sabre tooth 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 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. I was thinking Sabre Tooth Tigers and Mammoths. Those creatures actually tooled around Florida, back in the day.
Schroeder later told me deer had recently been spotted in there. Deer? Here? Okay.
What’s 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, again, it’s not a great fix, at all. The plan onvoled millions of taxpayer dollars ($).
It involves using man-made pipelines to reconnect the sink to its system of tunnels.
The Sulphur Springs swimming pool today. Note lack of swimmers or tourists.
A driving force behind the plan is the current condition of the water, points to Sulphur Springs. According to Tampa City Councilman Charles Miranda. “Salt water intrusion from Tampa Bay is a big issue (in the river).” he said. Fresh water from a revived Blue Sink Complex supposedly would help to alleviate that.
As for that old, defunct, fenced-off swimming pool in Sulphur Springs, who knows? Still, the big question remains, will the Blue Sink ever become blue again?
The answer simply, is not clear at all.
Just like the Blue Sink, today.
_____________________________
Author’s note:
On October 9, 2024, after a deadly and devastating Hurricane named Helene, Hurricane Milton showed up and made an west-to-east trek across Central Florida, starting with the Tampa Bay area. While Helene left its crippling destruction along the state’s prized and pricey West Gulf coast, the damage from Milton inland was also something to behold.
Milton not only took lives, homes, and big oak trees, the storm caused massive flooding in unlikely places. This would include Forest Hills where the Blue Sink Complex and Curiosity Creek are located. A large number of homes were flooded. Many had no flood insurance as they were NOT considered to be in a flood zone. Well, somebody was wrong.
The point here: At least part of the flooding can be connected to a massive flood management project in the Forest Hills area following an even worse flood there in 1979. Afterward, a very large flood control infrastructure was built. This included pumps and power ‘transfer switches’, part of all this is next to the Blue Sink with with other pieces of the puzzle spread throughout the community. It was supposed to help prevent that kind of flooding from ever happening again.
Fail.
The uproar has been pretty big. City and county officials are currently in C.Y.A. mode. So, this new, bad part of a bad story has yet to be concluded. When it is, I hope to come back from the other side of the mountain with an update and I’m certain it won’t be pretty.
That is all.
Carter C. Crabtree
A massive flood from Hurricane Milton puts parts of Forest Hills underwater in October, 2024. (Courtesy WTSP)
