Most definitely lightning can do this. This happened to RCA/GE (before
Thomson) at their warehouse in Tampa Florida. A lamp pole in their parking
lot was hit hard by lightning and destroyed the CRTs of almost 1000 sets. It
was the EMF, not the static, that was to blame. The electronics worked but
the CRTs were really messed up. Especially the larger ones.

"Bill" wrote in message
om...
Hello folks- I have an RCA TV chassis # CTC185AB. Customer said
after a severe storm he started getting weird colors on the screen.
Picture is perfect. I checked for blown parts and found none. I
resoldered some joints and replaced the deg. thermister just to be
sure. I also tried to clean these patches of color externally via a
deg. coil. I made some progress but the corners are still messed up.
I'm starting to believe he dropped it. Can storms do so much damage
that the screen can't be completely demagnetized ? What other
solutions are there in this case other than placing magnets on the CRT
? Thanks