"what about a sensing circuit designed to respond both to audio at the high deciBel level of nearby thunder, AND to the out-burst of static on an open AM frequency, and trigger a total disconnect?"
Use the detector circuit out of a junked AM radio, combine that with an audio circuit and you have two sensors for lightning. The detector from the radio can give you the EM intensity based on the amplitude of the received EM pulse, and the sound delay from the pulse spike to the time you hear it is the distance.
Set the EM pulse detector so that at a specified amplitude of that EM pulse, it can trigger an alarm or relay.
Or..simply look out the window! :p
RFB
Windows for radio and TV stations have gone the way of button shoes.
I always laughed at the TV stations, everyone of which had windowless studios, when they announced, "Partly cloudy with a chance of rain" while it was pouring outside.
The executive suites up in the penthouse had all-around picture windows, but executives never pick up a phone to send a tip to their weather staff.
But about the weather detector, since we are part 15 gimmick lovers, I am all for building RFB's sound/radio detector with a read-out based on the time differential between static and sound.
The channel 2 method sounds interesting also, and perhaps the device we build could have a mini-screen that showed the flashes.
Oh, oh, and instead of "looking out the window" we could put an outdoor camera up on our 3-meter stick! No, 4-cameras, facing every direction.
Maybe a 5th camera should look straight up.
I am not trying to be silly. I think the detector is a good idea, and it could be super-smart by deciding when to de-couple key connections, or run other connections to ground.
Licensed stations might want to benefit from our development. Do they have any devices that detect approaching storms? Doplar Radar? Oh.
"Licensed stations might want to benefit from our development. Do they have any devices that detect approaching storms?"
As a matter of fact yes. Not so much as detecting approaching storms, but internally to the transmitters are voltage and current monitoring circuits that sense abrupt surges and static build up, and for just a split second or so, when a bolt strikes, the circuits kick in and shut the TX down, some sites even have their antenna system connected through a grounding stack that shunts the coax and antenna directly to Earth ground during a strike, protecting the equipment.
Have not seen one of those however in quite some time since most of the logic circuits in today's TX's are quite fast in reacting to a strike and well protected and isolated from the rest of the system.
One such protection system can be found in a typical UHF high powered system, such as a radar or radio telescopes and television transmitters. Internally to the power amp valves (klystrons etc) tuning cavities and plumbing are light sensors to detect arc-overs, which when detected shuts down the transmitter.
RFB
What we need is mini-micro-interlock systems as described by RFB!
That could make storms actual fun!