In case you haven't hear the lightning story, it's a good one. Unfortunately, my picture taking skills aren't advanced enough to show the actual damage.
We came home a few weeks ago and noticed rocks all over the deck. Hmmm, that's odd. After a bit of investigation, we noticed the 30 foot pine in our back yard was scorched black from top to bottom and missing a bunch of bark. We put two and two together and came up with the obvious - the tree was hit by lightning.
The bolt of lightning went through the tree, dug a small ditch in the ground (through the rock path) and ended up hitting an old metal pole in the ground (the previous home owner used it as a satellite mount). It sent bark flying across the street, all over the yard, and on top of the house. It must have sounded like a bomb going off, as both levels of the deck were covered with rock from the path.
The phone was fried, the internet was baked, and both DVR boxes were toast. My photography skills are typically pretty good, but we were all shaken up a little bit that evening/night. We didn't even notice the bark across the street until later in the evening after the excitement had died down. In typical NC fashion, the storm was over in an hour and the sun was shining as I started cleaning up the mess.
This is just the trunk of the tree. There are large gashes torn out of the bark from top to bottom. I don't know if I'll ever get all of that bark out of my grass!
It tore a hole through the rock path, sending quarter-inch minus all over the place. It went through the rock, ripped a hole in the weed fabric then dug a small trench in the mud. Scary....
This is just the top level of the deck - the bottom level was covered in rocks as well. There were also chunks of bark all over the deck, yard and house.
This little end table used to have a glass top. Yeah, it shattered all over the rocks. You can see the metal post that has now been removed.
