Ever been really close to a lightning strike?

Like this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sn65RFvJKnk

I've had a couple of strikes that were close to me ... maybe within 25 yards ... but never got a good view of them like the guy filming that video! :o

Lights were out and I was making my way through a room with a large floor to ceiling window when lightning struck a mature sycamore tree in the yard. It split that big tree right in half right down to the ground. The noise of the strike was spectacular and very frightening.

The word awesome is much overused, but that truly was awesome.

Scarey

....I FELT it (the strange humming and tingling) and smelled the ozone of it. Freaky.

It was the middle of a summer night, and I was sleeping with the windows open when a thunderstorm came through. The thunder half woke me up, and suddenly, I felt a strange tingling in the air. Immediately there was a flash of blinding light outside my window with a nearly simultaneous deafening crrarrackling sound that sounded as if the earth was being split in two.

I filled my tank and walked in the store...I was at the counter paying and I could feel the hair on my arms lift and then there was a humongous CRACK! and it struck in the parking lot right outside the front window. It left a huge scorch mark on the pavement.

The interior of my lit up in bright blue, the radio turned to static for a few seconds, and I felt the car shudder from the lightening bolt hitting the ground.

It slanted down from a storm a good distance away and hit a metal fence post.
I was amazed at how small it was, a few intensely bright millimeters thick.

We'd expected to have a car camping site; but they were all full. So we took some nylon cord and tied our sleeping bags and the tent to our daypacks, and got a backcountry permit. The next morning we hiked back to the car, then drove to a picnic area to make breakfast on our Coleman stove, which was too cumbersome to lug into the woods.

The wind picked up as I was finishing the last pancakes, and we felt a few sprinkles. So we packed up quickly and went back to the car to eat. Not ten seconds after I closed my door, lightning struck a tree about ten feet from the car. We all felt our hair stand on end, it was so close. A hefty-sized branch came smoldering down, too. It was scary as hell!

Everything on that wall, including my TV, exploded. Not funny.

Had to get new TV, new security system, new doorbells, new stereo, new telephones -- the list goes on.

Five miles from the car, this downpour caught us; there had not been a cloud in the sky when we set out. It hailed and then rained in torrents. We walked down the trail which became a creek, soaked as if we were in a shower with our clothes on. The ground was white with hailstones.

But we couldn't take shelter under the thick pines, because of the lightning over our heads. The noise from the lightning had a strange sound as if it were coming through a pipe. I thought it quite possible that I would die right there, and it went on for many minutes - I expressed this to my hiking partner - he said to shut up and keep walking. Fifteen minutes later the sun was back out. We were soaked and shivering, but not at all complaining.

That's my home town along with Brevard. I sure miss it's beauty...although not now with all that bad weather. I live north of San Franciso now and it's quite pretty too. Big change from lovely Santa Monica though. Asheville is the hippiest small town in the south I think.

around California in 1987...north of Santa Barbara. I don't know how close -- I was closing rapidly on the spot where it struck -- but it was directly in front of me and seemed just a couple of meters away at the moment of striking. A bit of an adrenaline inducer.

I experienced very few thunderstorms in SoCal, in my years of living there, but this one lasted much of the night -- not too far after my near-miss I put my tent up and tried to go to sleep with lightning and thunder going on all around me.

We were to close.

We were in a car thankfully.

The tremendous boom of the strike outside, and a flash/crack (about like a good-sized firecracker) right beside me. The strike smoked many of the upstairs neighbor's electronics.

Lived in a quad-plex at the time.

My college student was a baby then.

There was a really weird light through the windows, a loud boom and then a humming vibrating noise. The power, of course, went out, the phone went out. I was hugely pregnant and home alone. The dog freaked, I freaked. It was pouring rain and all I could think was that the house would catch fire, I'd go into labor and have to deliver my baby on the street because I wouldn't be able to get the electric garage door opener to work.

The lightning hit near the peak of the roof and knocked off a chunk of alum.siding. The piece of siding had a big melted spot where the lightning hit. The phone lines on the ceiling joists in the basement had burned up and there was a line of burn mark where the lines had been and soot inside of every phone jack. Later when I opened the dryer the dryer light exploded. A couple other electronics were fried. When they came to repair the phone they told me that the electricty had gone through the phone line and had I been on the phone I would certainly have been electrocuted. Needless to say, I never, ever, ever talk on the phone during a storm anymore. Scary shit.

While I was driving. Scared the bejeesus out of me! Sounded like a shotgot went off in the back seat.

I felt the static charge just before when all the hair on my arms and head stood up, and I had a strange feeling come over me seconds before the strike. It was right outside my house -- I was inside.

Counted and charted over 400 strikes in an hour of Celestial Pyrotechnics that humbled me.

Here's Martie!



Nice abs, Sweetie!

seems like we are a lightening magnet here. One time, it hit the pole outside the house, came through the electric line shooting a fireball out the kitchen outlet where my answering machine was located. Fried the heck out of that machine. Another one split a huge old tree by the basement door.

The most frightening one was when I was comforting our 13 yr old dog in our dining room leaning over him next to the window seat as he trembled with fear. A lightening bolt hit the evergreen tree about 10ft from the window..all I saw was blinding white light and the noise was deafening. I really thought I was a gonner. When I opened my eyes all I saw was raining burning evergreen outside. Yep..we lost several electronics that time too.

DH was outside on our airing deck clearing a clogged gutter spout when the hair on his arms stood up and he heard a sizzle. He raced inside..I was downstairs and terrified he'd been hit. The bolt hit a church down the road..blew apart the steeple.

:scared: I was standing beside a huge window, maybe two feet from the window. A tree branch just outside the window (about two feet from the window on the other side) was struck by a lightning bolt, which scared the crap out of me and the coworker standing right beside me. :yoiks: It was cloudy but not stormy, and it was a total surprise. The instant it hit, every hair on my body felt like it stood straight up for a split second because of the static electricity. Same thing happened to my coworker.

That same afternoon, another strike hit a huge oak tree across the street. The lightning bolt richocheted off the tree and into a parked car, setting it on fire. :( I'm glad no one was in it at the time!

I didn't get to see it, though. :P

But I have been close enough on other occasions to see it. One night a bolt hit the chain-link fence surrounding the pen of my kennel. I was 2 feet away, watching the storm from under the overhang. Bright flash, and blue points of light dancing along the perimeter of the fence - eerie and beautiful. I felt the bolt - a flash of tingly sensation all through my body.

Another time, I was horseback riding when a storm hit. My friend and I were riding on a woods trail and a bolt hit about 25 feet in front of us - threw up a big divot and scared the horses half to death. We stopped at a house to use the phone to let our parents know we were okay and I held the horses while she called. They were dancing all over the place - there was so much electricity in the air that they were getting shocks through the bit - I could feel the electricity too.

And the time a storm came out of nowhere and I raced out to the field to bring in the horses - we had a huge pasture and I saw at least half a dozen bolts hit all over that field while I tried to catch the panicked horses and get them in the barn. The neighbors could see the whole thing through their big window overlooking it and since they were both doctors, they were convinced they'd be needed since they figured I'd be hit. I wasn't but those bolts were close.

I'm a lightning rod. :)

We had a huge lightning storm with nothing but a tent over my head. We were at about 7500', which made the thunder horribly loud. It lasted for hours and I've never been more scared in my life.

and out the back door. She said her hair stood on end. I have had strikes close enough to hear the sizzle but they haven't been house guests!

My uncle was visiting from California and he and my mom both thought I had been hit by it since I was outside only moments before securing the barbecue cover or some stupid thing I thought I should be doing. There are a lot of strikes which set off our smoke detectors, but that one was either in my yard or the one directly behind it. It lit up the whole house like I couldn't believe and rattled the windows really hard.

We get some really hard prarie thunderstorms in Colorado Springs. We are also evidently the world capital of hailstorms. One of them when I was five destroyed my family's car even though we were only in the actual hail for less than two minutes. Everybody in my neighborhood had to get new rooves.

We were watching the funnel off in the distance when a huge lightning bolt hit the gas station across the street.

The attendant took off running down the street and never did come back.

Once in a 28' ChrisCraft 50 miles off the Georgia coast the boat got hit in a storm that blew up out of nowhere.
In August,while camping in north Ga. our camp got bombarded by lightning.One bolt hit a tree right behind the camper awning we were underneath.A friend who was leaning against a metal camp table got shocked by it.
Another time while unloading trash at the dump,lightning hit a tree about 50' away.IThe hair on my head stood up for that one.
Several more close calls have also happened to me.

The B-737's autospoilers did not deploy on landing because of the lightning strike. A lightning strike in a Lockheed JetStar II resulted in a half-dollar sized hole in the radome (nose) of the airplane.

until the pilot gets on the speakers and says "Hey, we are ok" is one of the most astonishing and scariest things I have ever experienced. No one breathed, no one looked around, no one MOVED for a solid 30 seconds. I think we were all busy praying to whatever (oh please oh please oh PLEASE let that not be an engine that just blew up)

I have also been is a few houses that have been struck hard - sparks blow out of the outlets about 2-3 feet and EVERYONE dives for the floor.

Struck a tree across the street. Just went POP!

Startles the living he!! out of you, but rarely does significant damage.

A branch split and fell in front of me--smoking!! The ground shook so hard I nearly fell down.

I no longer stand under trees during thunderstorms.

Boy Scout camp in the 70's. Sitting at the picnic table right next to a large tree. Table had metal legs and my foot was in a puddle of water. All I remember is a huge flash and some sparks with a lot of smoke. I woke up in a tent 20 ft away laying on the floor, I do not know how I got there and nobody else did either.
I had a large burn on my toe and one on my buttocks.