It was the terrible prospect of lightning one day striking the historic windmill that troubled Andrew Farrell. A bolt five times hotter than the surface of the sun instantly turning moisture in one of the mill’s timbers to steam, exploding it. What if a raging fire then engulfed the 160-year-old building? Perhaps most troublingly, he couldn’t shake the thought that this nightmare might be getting more likely with every passing year—because of climate change.
So Farrell of the Broads Authority, a British public body, decided to get a lightning-protection system installed on Mutton’s Mill, a 19th-century windmill that stands on the flat, wide wetland