Anyone been near to a lightning strike or seen the aftermath?

A couple of years back lightning struck A neighbours chimney 10 feet away from me ... scared the crap out of me ..... Strange sensation as well because you feel/hear the sound/wave moving away from you instead of seeing a flash and then a couple of seconds later hear the rumble. Difficult to explain but got the adrenaline rushing nonetheless

A few years ago I was sheltering from a cloudburst under a tree, when lightening struck another tree about 50m from me :eek::eek::eek:

I saw the tree trunk light up white-hot, it pulsed for a second, then a big puff of smoke came up from the tree.

There was a huge bang, and the power of it all was very, very frightening.

As a child, my OH was blown out of her kitchen and down the hall by a strike that came up through the pipes and into the steel sink assembly as she was washing up. Obviously I wasnt around to see it but her siblings tell the tale of the flash and audible static as well as her disorientation and stiffness for a while after.

They laugh a lot at it as she wasnt seriously hurt, but she has a terrible phobia of thunderstorms, perfectly justified as shes been through it and its heartbreaking to see a child like fear overcoming a mature rational woman when ever we do get a rare thunderstorm. If we lived in the south east the last few days I imagine she would have lost her reason altogether....

Yeah I was in S.A and saw forked lightning for the first time in my life. There was a fairly big forrest a few feet from the back garden and i saw a huge tree get hit and break apart.

As there was no rain a fire soon started between dry grass and the bark, as I headed toward it hoping the metal band on the hose's end wouldn't attract another strike I thought the smell was very different to say a bonfire or burning wood at home, was kind of an acrid smell.

A decade or so ago, the tree outside my house was hit while I was sitting by the window about 40-50m away. Sound like a small bomb going off, the after-image of a flash without actually seeing the flash, it blew out windows in the surrounding area, caused the roots of the tree to explode out of the ground like detcord when the sap superheated, and of course it fried my modem completely and tripped half the circuit breakers in the place.

Not an experience I'd care to get a closer look at.

The lightning took out my modem yesterday, so I phoned Eircom and they arranged to send me another, which true to promise came today. When I answered the door to the delivery man I said 'oh good!' and he said 'yes, you and several hundred others in Tramore today!' So while the storm was circulating around the area it was apparently frying modems all around.

We are very high in the surrounding area and in a storm a few years ago the gable end of one of the houses was hit, left a hole in the wall and also had lights flashing and alarms going in all the cars parked in the street.

Wednesday evening 8th Oct , I was just about to open the car door , and I heard a click , and then a massive bang of lightening.

It was like a huge fireball, like something you see in the movies ...

GAAman wrote: »

was kind of an acrid smell.

snowstorm445 wrote: »

it left a distinct smell of sulphur.

Is suspect it was more likely ozone or nitrous oxide (when you breathe it in will change to nitric acid in your nose and mouth).

Essentially the extreme temperatures change the chemical composition of the nitrogen and oxygen in the air.

Our house got hit twice when I was a kid. The first time fried the burglar alarm - I remember it going off for ages before we managed to stop it! I can't remember the damage the second time.... My dad now freaks out whenever he hears thunder, and goes around the entire house plugging everything out - including the internet, which was always annoying!

Earlier this year and I posted here when it happened. Hit the power pole in the back yard & fried the treatment tank. I suspect the charge went down the pole, through the wet ground to the tank.

At the time all I was out the front of the house, stormwatching. Huge flash & bang straight overhead, I scuttled into the house and the power was off.

3 days later ESB told us to get an electrician as their side was fine & fair enough it was a frigged tank.

I've had lightning strike about 10 feet from me, as I was looking out the window during a rainstorm. Apart from the lightning itself and the very loud bang, there was no other sign that it had happened - not even a bit of scorched grass.

Incidentally, about 90% of people hit directly by lightning survive.

I was in Ibiza Town a few years ago during a thunderstorm, we were waiting for the coach to take us back to our hotel near a Marina, there was a huge flash from fork lightning that hit the water on front of us, the noise was deafening and the smell of burning afterwards was in the air, it frightened the s..t out of us. That was no more than a few hundred feet from us.

Preparing to get onto the the Sorba Slides in the Piedmont region of the Italian Alps last summer for some fairly extreme kayaking, a thunderstorm started up overhead. We delayed getting ready, as sharp-edged wet paddles provide pretty good point-field-effect transitions for the huge electric field potentials to cause us problems when on the water. Sitting under a bus shelter during the downpour I was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle, when about 30m in front of me on the edge of the ridge above the village, a bolt went through a tree right on the ridgeline. It was very pretty to see the tree's shape delineated by a hugely bright purple glow, followed by the tree's effective disintegration. The bolt came from behind and overhead, as the sound was felt/heard sooner than the distance would have suggested. Also, during the same storm, another strike hit the hillside about 100m away from me, just on the opposite side of the valley. A much bigger strike, but with a very noticeable tenth of a second or so from light to sound. I didn't feel any local charge buildup either time but we decided as a group to go for coffee and delay throwing ourselves down those waterfalls for a little while anyway!

It's funny how many odd fallacies have come up with lightning and strikes. The presence of metal has much less bearing on the likelihood of being struck than you'd think - it's all about the shape of stuff. Pointy or edged stuff is much more likely to create a leader than something round and smooth. Something metal and kinda pointed may create a leader more readily than a sharp insulator due to electron mobility in the metal but under the huge potentials involved it won't make that much difference. Being saturated wet is a protection as well, allowing the charge path to go through the water on your clothes than through your skin, though there is still the risk of burns from water flashing to steam on your skin. Kayaking during a thunderstorm is a high risk as the paddles are usually sharp edged so they are strike targets even if made from decent insulators like fiberglass or composites, and the paddles also may be a more amenable path to the riverbed to ground than the surrounding water may be. Also kayakers would likely be the tallest thing in the vicinity..

If you feel the air charge up, put your feet together, squat down and form as tight a ball as you can. Try to get to a hollow in the ground, and stay away from things that outcrop such as boulders and trees. Don't lie down, don't put your hands on the ground, don't worry too much as there's nothing you an really do

If there's a strike within ~10m or so of you, if your feet are far apart, the charge dissipation from the strike point may find that the path up and down your legs is less resistance than that through the ground between your feet, giving you a nasty shock. This is the reason why many farm animals die from a lightning strike.