A bunch of thunderstorms pushed their way through our parts last night. The evening was nice so we opened our bedroom windows. The sound of the falling rain was lovely and the distant thunder was almost just as pleasant.

Both of us had stayed up later than usual so we were sleeping soundly. Around 2:00am a really loud clap of thunder woke us up and Karen jumped straight up in bed. We live on a wooded lot so lightning and high winds give us the heeby-jeebies. We can just see some huge oak limb falling on our house. Something that has happened once already (see Crash! Boom!, December 12, 2007).

But nothing bad had happened so we settled back to sleep, when…

BOOM!

The clap of thunder and the flash of lightning were simultaneous. And the volume of the thunder was 4 or 5 louder than the last blast had been. I was laying in bed generally pointing away from the strike site. Still, I saw this vivid white glow right through my eyelids. Amazing!

We knew something hit close. We got up and looked out our front windows to see if anything was on fire. And while the orange arc street lights were playing tricks reflecting off the glistening leaves in our front yard, we didn’t think anything was burning. We returned to bed once more.

In the morning when we were getting dressed, Karen looked out the side window in our bedroom and discovered that the damage was done next door at the Fischers’. A big tree at the front of their driveway had been hit. It’s not more than 50 feet from our house. While both parts of the tree had been hit, one part had taken most of the damage. The lightning had toppled the tree about halfway up its trunk into their front yard. And the bottom part of the tree was blasted apart, stripping bark off as it went. One limb fell on the front edge of their garage but only seemed to cause some light damage to their gutters.

This is the closest thing like this that I think has ever happened to us.