Lightening damage pics

jon f mn

Well-known Member
Finally got home during daylight so I could look for where the lightening from the other night hit. It hit a large pine about 145' from the house right next to the path to the field I walk a lot.


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The tree was over 2' across and it blew it to pieces. What's left of the trunk was maybe 20' tall and about 20' of the top was there, but I suspect that much was blown to bits.


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This one shows from the tree to the house




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The furthest pieces were 50 paces from the tree.


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This one was about 10' from the house.


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Some of the larger pieces.


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One of the pictures knocked off the

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That is some serious power! Nothing appears to be broken or damaged anywhere, so that's good. Makes for a better story that way.
 
As a kid, one day we had one of them out-of-nowhere Texas rain showers hit. I went into the shop. Tried to call our dog in. All of a sudden, lightning struck a 100' Pine that was about 20' from the shop. I was just a couple feet from the door, which was still ajar. The lightning went down the tree, then jumped to ground and followed the electric into the shop. Blew out two 220V wall outlets, with one of them shooting pieces of the outlet all the way across the 2-car-garage sized shop. My ears were ringing for a few minutes. Definitely an eye opener!
 
Pretty impressive! We had a 30 foot willow reduced to toothpicks one time.


On the other hand, my neighbor had a strike on his metal polebarn. I noticed it while doing a security check.
Struck a polebarn screw, approximately door knob level. Took the head off the screw, left a burn mark on the steel about the size of a quarter, and singed the perlin inside where the screw came through. Only explanation I could come up with was a micro lightning strike. Anybody else see his type of thing?
 

When I was working I got up about 4:30 in the morning, still dark of course. One morning after a storm went through I looked out to the edge of the property and saw what looked like lots of fireflies around a maple tree. I soon realized the tree was on fire about 20 feet up the trunk, the "fireflies" were sparks flying off. I got dressed quickly and grabbed a hose we'd been using to water the garden and sprayed it the best I could and finally got it out.
A storm a year or so later caused the tree to break off just about the burned area.
 
My pole barn has been hit 3 times. First time it came thru the underground fence wire and blew the control rto bits. Most I found of it was the wire plug in. Second time just a little damage but the third time was a big one. It fused all the breaker in the electrical box and blew sever plugs all apart worst was anywhere the electric wire was with in a half ice from the steel in burned a hole thru the steel. Ins had to replace all the wiring and the steel on the sides of it. When the fence got hit I never saw anything like it but somehow all the copper was gone in the wire but the plastic outer covering was not touched. When I hooked up another that one took me a while to find
 
Ray, here is my take on what happened to your neighbors building. Being from Kansas I had a fair amount of time to observe lightning. Sometimes lightning bolts seem relatively straight directly down to earth in one concentrated bolt. This is the type of lightning I would say hit Johns tree. Other times the lightning may have a larger central bolt, but smaller ..fingers .. come off of it and seek other targets. One of these ..fingers.. is what I suspect hit your neighbors building. At my home in Emporia KS I just mentioned in another post during a storm lightning struck a willow tree on the fence line behind the house about 75 feet away. Right at the time it struck I had reached up to switch on the back patio light. The hair on my arm stood up and a stinging sensation shot back to my elbow. The sensation to a lessoning degree lasted 10 - 15 minutes after the strike. It split one of the main branches that the tree separated into several feet off the ground.
 
I know a man who was getting bids to have a 3 car garage taken down.
Lightening took it down, left only one wall standing and he got paid by insurance.
He was lucky, instead of paying he got paid to take his garage down.
 
I ran across this tree while i was Kayaking a creek several years ago. I think it had to be hit my lightning. It split the tree exactly in half and the other half of the tree was in the creek.
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Our barn is on a high spot and open all around. Big doors facing west with a small door to the east. FIL told me once that he was in there closing it up before an approaching thunderstorm and a bolt passed right through both doors while he was in there. I imagine that would be pretty scary.
 
I have a cedar tree 50 ft from the house that had the top ten feet blown out of it by a strike. The only damage was the Dish element was flashed and had to be replaced. We had a large oak hit in the fence line,it burnt for a week. It lived three or four years before the SIL pushed up four feet of dirt around it,it was dead in a year.
 

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