re: Lightning storm story. Tell us about it.

Lightning struck our chain link fence about 50 yards from the house. It traveled up the fence and blew about 10 bricks off of the house. It also fried the modem and router.

Early 2k's, lightning hit our house just past bedtime. Or so we thought. Fried every smoke and CO2 sensor in the house, and they all started beeping and gave off a light halo of smoke. Took out random things throughout the house -

- The washer, but not the dryer right next to it
- About a third of my component home theater setup, they were all on the same Monster surge protector.
- Range next to the oven, which it also got, but not the microwave right above the oven
- One of the two outside AC units, they were separated by maybe 2-3'

The neighbors on both sides got their breakers blown. Altogether $14k in damage, neither us nor the FD, who went up on a ladder truck with a thermal camera over our roof that night, could ever find where the lightning struck. Trees and house showed no signs. Nothing was still hot on thermal.

I sometimes wonder if I attract lightning. I was home when my home was struck. I was also home when a neighbor’s tree not more than 100 feet from my home was struck. I’ve seen ball lightning while driving. I’ve been close enough to other strikes where I can sense the strike before it happens.

In BTR, storm and had the flash and bang effect at the same time. Went out the front door and several folks were out looking around and you could smell the pine in the air. Big pine tree in neighbors yard was hit. Killed half my shop lights and a radio but didn't trip a breaker. Tree died over the next year. Luckily the neighbor cut the pines down

Was living in South Florida and a coworkers husband was struck by lightning while he was on the beach.
He had previously had open heart surgery and they said the staples in his chest saved his life. Apparently the bolt would have fried his heart if he didn’t have those staples in his chest.

Our carport had a huge pine that my father built our carport around, wasn’t a good idea. The den was next to the garage where we mostly hung out. We had one of those TV, radio and record player combos. I usually sat right in front of the tv if nobody else was in the room with me. Storm came through and lightning struck the pine tree and traveled through the cable line to the back of the tv and smoked it with a very loud noise. Freaked me the hell out. Tree died of course and they had to piece it because it was in the middle of the carport. This was in the middle 60,s. Learned my lesson and moved away from the tv after that when a storm came through.

1. Lightning struck a big pecan tree next to the house. Blew bark off the trunk in a line on the trunk down to the ground.

2. Lightning hit a flagpole next to a building at work. Blew out some chunks of concrete in the corner of the raised slab of the adjacent building.