Lightning and trees, not a good mix.

The recent post about the veracity of the pedestrian being struck by lightning (twice), prompted my to post this little photo essay.

Late last week we had a major thunderstorm here, a very close lightning strike followed by an enormous crash suggested to me that my next door neighbors house had been hit. He in turn thought it was his neighbor on the other side and so on round the creek, when we ventured out we found the strike was about 400 yards away and taking the hit was a mature 80 foot tall sweetgum tree with its spring foliage already in place.

The tree was about three feet across at the ground and has been split apart from top to bottom. There is no bark left on the tree except for a few inches at the ground and the broken limbs are spread over an radius of about fifty feet.

One large shard in the picture on the upper right was found a hundred feet away from the tree, it is about twenty feet long and has the cross section of a railway sleeper.

I suppose it is possible for a human to survive a strike but looking at this damage it would seem remote.