re: Lightning strikes explodes a telephone pole.

Some lightning took out part of a pine tree back at our old house that I grew up in. A big summer thunderstorm rolled through, we lost power, and all of a sudden the loudest thing I've ever heard happened. We looked out of the front windows and there is a 2 foot wide strip taken out of the side of an old pine. Maybe 15-20 feet long. Limbs and debris was everywhere. It struck the tree about 40 feet off the ground.