Lightning strikes thrice

I can't believe I'm writing this, but lightning hit us again, in about the same place. I was sitting in my office yesterday afternoon, just out of a meeting, when there was a flash and an instant, insanely loud crash. Scared the shit out of me. I went to the bathroom (not for that reason though), and noticed that the GFI tripped. After that, I noticed the kitchen did as well. I reset them, turned some lights on, and it seemed everything was fine.

But it wasn't. Around bed time, it felt warm downstairs, so I fired up the Google Home app, and noticed that it said the downstairs thermostat was offline. Having just replaced the entire upstairs system, I did the usual troubleshooting, starting with making sure the condensation drain didn't back up. Then I busted out the multi-meter to see if the thermostat was getting power, and sure enough, a solid 28V was there. The thermostat got fried. Again. I opened up the base and found the same charred spot that I saw six years ago.

I'm no stranger to this. Both thermostats got fried in 2019 (same model), but Google was nice enough to replace them because I complained on Twitter. That hit also blew some holes into the upstairs heat pump, and fried the fiber/coax converter for the Internet connection. Then in 2022, in a freak March thunderstorm, lightning fused the power gateway off the grid (it isolates solar/battery in the case of an outage), and killed my router, an ethernet switch, and the fiber/coax converter again, while also melting a light switch.

I can't say precisely where the lightning "landed," but what the hell, three times in around the same spot? At least it didn't break the power plant or the HVAC this time (well, thermostat aside). Do I need a lightning rod on the house to divert it away from stuff? A whole-house surge protector wouldn't matter, because it seems to come in via the HVAC, not the grid.