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Photo by Jim Craven Storm clouds gather above South Stage Road Tuesday. The clouds brought what they promised: rain, hail and lightning. Stormy weather Lightning sparks fires, outages By JULIE SWENSEN Summer turned fierce Tuesday as a storm sparked fires, cut power to thousands of customers and rained hail as big as three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Thunderstorms Thunderstorms are formed from a combination of moisture, rapidly rising warm air and a force capable of lifting air -- such as warm and cold fronts or mountains. All thunderstorms contain lightning, an electrical discharge that results from the buildup of positive and negative charges within a thunderstorm. When the buildup becomes strong enough, lightning appears as a "bolt." A bolt of lightning reaches a temperature approaching 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a split second. The rapid heating and cooling of air near the lightning causes thunder. The wild storm brought 5,400 lightning strikes between noon and about 7 p.m. in Jackson, Josephine, Klamath and Siskiyou counties, according to the National Weather Service. In Jackson County, one of those bolts struck a house at 2402 Old Military Road, said Capt. Ken Griswold of Jackson County Fire District 3 in Central Point. Gina Hawley, one of the residents of the home, said lightning struck a garage that had been converted into an apartment. Her niece who lives up the hill noticed the smoke. Hawley's husband, Greg, used an ax to cut open the roof, and someone helped with a garden hose on the fire. The bathroom was damaged. "We're just really fortunate nobody lived there," said Hawley, who was surprised to learn that lightning sparked the blaze. Lightning also hit a house at 2496 Taylor Road in Central Point; although the bolt spared damage to the house, it slightly shocked a woman washing her hands inside, Griswold said. She was not injured. "Luckily no one got hit by this. It got wild," Griswold said. Lightning also struck close to Pacific Power's Fielder Creek substation in Rogue River around 5 p.m., cutting off power to about 3,000 customers in the Rogue River area. Power was restored by 7:30 p.m. About the same time the Rogue River power went out, an estimated 600 customers in the Trail/Lost Creek area lost power because of trees on power lines. Bob Barry, customer business manager for Pacific Power, said about 9:45 p.m. that the power was expected to be back on soon. At that time, he also expected power to be back on in the next couple of hours for the more than 100 customers scattered throughout the valley who lost power as well. There were momentary outages throughout the entire valley as the storm passed through, he said. And in Grants Pass, 1,120 customers on Lower River Road lost power, which was restored about 7:30 p.m. The storm dropped not only hail three-quarters of an inch in diameter in Selma, but hail a half-inch in diameter in Grants Pass, and hail a quarter-inch in diameter in Gold Hill and Merlin. It also dumped an inch of rain on Medford Tuesday. Many tree fires in rural parts of the county kept emergency dispatchers busy. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA