OT:Lightning

Thunderstorms have been popping up in the afternoons the last few days. Two days ago one came up and We left the metal building we were taking down. We got to the gate and lightning struck a pine tree 50 feet away. My son and I were pretty shaken up.
Ron

Did your hair stand up from the static electricity ? Its a frightening situation, before it happens,and its really odd, as right before you hear that explosion, there is this ZZZZZZZZ....TTTT noise, then the crack of it slicing through the air immediately follows, you never hear that above sound unless you are real close to the strike.

When I was a kid, and had longer hair, I was tossing one of those lawn jarts that I found, never saw one before, hey this is kinda fun, thunderstorm is headed toward us, but I could not really see, had remembered what to do if it ever happened, hair stand up. It stood up alright and I hit the deck, bolt of lightning struck within 50 feet or so, I mean it was real close, boy was I lucky.

I have witnessed it hitting all kinds of things over the years, April of 2011, at like 1:30 am, I was up and there was some disturbance or a thunderhead could apparently, it struck and old poplar, biggest one on this farm, and blew out a 6" to 8" trench in the trunk 40'to 50' long, it sent 4x4 size chard's of wood out, smaller pieces measured out to be over 100'-0" into a field. It was as if charges were placed to carve out that trench in the trunk of it, I have photos of it.

I saved a few pieces of it why I do not know, but that had to be one super charged strike, I never saw such damage from lightning, and it came in on a small branch like 1" diameter, or it met from the ground up to that branch if I understand the dynamics of what happens, I saw it hit our old victorian house, from up on the hill at our new house, and I could not tell where it hit. Place should have burned down, every window in the place lit up with an amber glow, it was intense to see this.

The worst place I have ever been was on a Caterpillar D5, on a big site job, we had 18 pieces going on that job, was not on the D8K that day pushing pans, foreman had me grading building pads, in the middle of what was a beautiful dairy farm in Howell, NJ somewhere off Vanderveer road, the place was flat and there was 200 + acres, plus adjoining lands that were just as flat, one area was a big ole sod farm, the top soils were incredible, what a waste and what destruction we did to that place, tore the barns, silos down, I hated being involved in it. Every week a storm would roll in, guaranteed, and this idiot foreman would wait until the last minute to call us in to the staging area, where we park the equipment and get fueled up, top off fluids, do repairs.

Well that lightning was getting closer and we all raced back in, I never ran any of those older cats in 3rd gear, ever, full throttle, just touch a steering lever and huge chunks of turf flying, I left before the foreman called it, to heck with him I am outta here man, this is nuts, the guy in the old Kobelco, air over hydraulic excavator, was creeping along with the boom and stick folded up and the bucket curled just dragging, he's crouched in the seat, I have a photo of me running that same machine, I will never forget the look of fear on his face and how it seemed to take for ever, I'd have left it and ran, darned foreman cared more about production than the safety of those who were getting it done.

Its nothing to fool with, good you are all right, had you been that close to the poplar I mentioned above, you would have been impaled or stuck but good with giant splinters. I guess its not only true that it can knock limbs off, topple a tree, also explodes violently too, crazy stuff to be around !!!!

Ron, we are gonna have a lot of dead pine trees up here in Conway. One will be next door. Glad you got out safely.

Several years ago, I was driving to work and there was a very small black cloud passing over the highway. Not big enough to really notice.

There was a huge "boom" as a bolt of lightning went over the truck. Sounded like a bomb had gone off in the truck. Fried some of the electronics on the truck, but it kept running.

Post some pics. I'd like to see them.

That stuff amazes me with what it can do. back when i worked in the oilfield i had just turned into a rig location when lighting hit the top of the rig. ball of fire rolled down all four a legs,hit the ground and the smoke dust just boiled.knocked out every single electric thing on that rig site i think. took us a week to get up and running again.oddly enough the whole crew was out on the floor making a connection and it never hurt anyone,though there was some pretty suspicious smells around there!

Here ya go, pretty powerful stuff, used to have hunting stand in this tree, sure as heck glad I was not in it, have another 6 frame scaffold built within and around a twin trunk poplar, awesome spot, but I'll bail out immediately at the sign of any dark clouds LOL !!!

See where it came in or came from below and met at that little branch with the peeled off piece under it, incredible, I would not want to be near anything like this, the orange glow and noise was unreal, I am approximately 250 yards from this when it happened, could not sleep, was awake when it hit.



Nice size piece to impale you !!!

Billy NY,

Wow, amazing pics. Thanks for posting. I am what I call a "thunder chicken"... now I know why!

It aint no joke, this reinforced my respect and out right fear of it, those pieces of wood were littered everywhere and big pieces were 30 feet away, all in a spray pattern, the force that caused this is incredible, given what was on the ground out to 100 feet or so, like a mortar round or grenade shrapnel, 'cept made of wood.

I know the site and the feelings as I used to work the derricks in Wyoming and Montana. I gave up being a derrick hand for the water truck. Going back to same rig, and the very next day, we had a gas explosion. The derrick hand didn't make it.

I'm scared to death of lightning! We were laying blacktop on a big hilltop alongside a strip mine, when a bad storm rolled in. We had three roller operators, a paver operator, an oiler, two laborers and one truck driver. Two flagmen were 300 feet front and back of us with nowhere to hide. Foreman was gone and our vehicles were parked a mile up the road. The semi was a crane cab and the driver and two other guys managed to squeeze in there. The rest of us got under the dump trailer. Rain was coming down in sheets. We were all sopping wet. Lightning hit a new woven wire fence right beside us on the right-of-way line. It burned the galvanizing off of that fence for about 600 feet. I'm surprised it didn't hit the paver and kill us all. I'm also surprised that none of us felt any kind of shock, but we all felt the hair raise on our arms. I hope that's my last encounter with lightning up close.

Thanks! Shiver me timbers! Seems appropriate here. That comes from cannon balls blowing apart the wood hulls of ships and the wood shrapnel would kill more than the cannon ball.

It seems I've heard that poplar wood from a tree that has been hit by lightning turns a kind of greenish tint and is valuable. I don't know if it's true.

just over onehalf century ago while planting lighting side bolt hit raised planter marker and exhaust stack on John Deere G I was driving. Killed the tractor, my arms hurt for 2-3 days. In 2000 lighting hit barn I was in. Sparks down to board in my hands and from fingers of other hand to saw table. Whin 2 weeks heart was stopping and restarting. Got pacemaker. Dr says natural pacmaker literly ruined by lighting. I try to be very careful about storms now!!! Never did understand why weather peopel say thunder storms as when thunder is heard the danger is over. To me should say Lighting storms.

I looked up lightning struck wood, did not find much on it, but that would be really funny if some of those pieces that came off had even the slightest worth, can't figure why it would, I had to take a couple and add some more clutter in the garage, heck of a conversation piece I suppose, displayed next to the photos LOL !

I don't know about the chunks that came off. What I understood was the lightning killed the tree and the tree was cut down and sent to a mill and the boards from the tree showed a unique greenish color and was valuable. I did some Googling myself as I heard this probably back in the '70s. I couldn't find anything either. I did see that apparently poplar wood color can be reddish, greenish or yellowish. (http://www.smcm.edu/arboretum/Pub_Tulip_Poplar.html) Perhaps back when I heard this story someone had one die from lightning and thought the wood was greenish because of the strike. That's beginning to sound likely. Maybe greenish is just a less common color for the wood. The less common something is the more people are generally willing to pay for it.

Still great pics!

Right, we used to mill a lot of poplar at the lumber yard for trim, which most times was to be painted and it had some green hue in the grain at times, this would be a decent mill log, well a lot of branches, and I'd have to metal detect it, some tree spikes on the lower half and some nails where the stand was, not far up, before that it was a clean log, just that 8 foot near the butt, I also heard that the ground where the lightning passes, may contain something of value, lot of myths or tales to look into, neat stuff, glad I was nowhere near this when it happened !

Yea, I almost forgot I've seen some stories on TV about lightning hitting the ground and creating fulgurites. There's an article on Wikipedia about it--I'll have to read it sometime. It certainly is a good thing you weren't nearby.
Fulgurite

Billy awesome pictures. I feel that one of us would have been hurt if we had not been in my truck, a couple more seconds and I would have been opening the metal gate. When I was young and sitting on the porch with my Grandfather during a thunderstorm when lightning struck in the pasture near the house. Papa turned to me and said when the rain is over you need to go check under the oak trees. He was right there were two dead cows and three pigs.
Ron

These pictures could have been in the south west corner of my yard about 15 yrs. ago. I was driving home from work about 3 miles from home and lightening bolt came down in the vicinity of home, found a walnut tree with the side blowed out and splinters all over and a big chunk like that at the bottom of the tree.

Couple summers ago I drove to my uncles in a storm. Got to his place as it ended. Sun came out, storm moved off, birds chirpping. ZZZZTT! Bang! A big bolt came down from the blue and hit the power pole accross the street going to the neighbors grain bin set up. Its the bolt after the storm that gets ya.

Wow, probably never knew what hit em too, always heard oak was prone to get struck.

Thanks for posting that, I will have to see if there is any of those present, be a nice wall hanger at least !

Thanks for posting that, I will have to see if there is any of those present, be a nice wall hanger at least !

Pretty crazy stuff isn't it, I've never seen one blown out like this one before, too bad it was poplar, I could make a bat like in "The Natural" w/ Robert Redford and Wilford Brimley (sp?)

This damage was caused by lightning last Saturday. It also damaged computer equipment at the bank across the street and at businesses on either side of the building.