Lightening Strike!

When I heard about this I just had to go and see it - We've had some somewhat unusual lighting storms around here recently and this tree was struck a few days ago. It literally exploded. Pieces of what at one time was a pretty mature fir tree were scattered over a radius of about 40 feet or so - the big chunk in the photo was probably about 20 feet from the tree trunk. The fellow in the office that I asked where the tree was, was there at the time the tree was hit (it wasn't very far away) - he said the sound and light were incredible and the building even shook enough to knock things off of the shelves. I can only imaging. I watched lightening strike the radio towers that are probably 1/4 mile from my house (about 4 blocks) yesterday and that was incredible enough - and those are grounded.. I was quite surprised at the location. I figured that the tree would be in one of the higher spots in the park, but it was not - it was nearly at the lowest point. A reminder that under *any* tree in a lightening storm is a very bad place to be.