10 Scariest Lightning Strikes Caught On Camera

10 Scariest Lightning Strikes Caught On Camera

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[ostlandr]

Granddad used to say "Lightning never strikes twice in the same place- because the same place isn't there any more."

[xandermansmom]

My mom left the window open for a cool breeze. A lightning bolt snaked through the window, across the living room, and struck our little tv with rabbit ears. I was watching Beverly Hillbillies. It was very startling, but as a child, I quickly forgot the fear and was sad I didn’t get to finish watching the show because it broke our tv.

[LITTLE]

As much as I study severe weather all my life, being struck by lightning is one of my biggest fears, due to how unpredictable and dangerous storms are. I still don't understand how people survive being hit by a million volts packing 50, 000'F temperature.

[wsbill]

Over 40 years ago I was delivering pizza in a 1964 Malibu. It was pouring rain and there was a huge flash of lightning that lit up everything and a giant boom of thunder at the same time. My car went completely dead at that moment. I stopped at the curb and waited a few minutes for the rain to let up, then I grabbed my crescent wrench and screwdriver, popped the hood and took a look. I snugged up my battery terminals and the car started right up. No computer to roast in a 64.

[Hunter]

My roommate, and I spent almost a month in the hospital, because of lighting. We were hit standing in our living room, with the back glass doors open. Our apartment, at the time, small. Where we were, was 1 foot from the doors. We were just a unlucky, and lucky at the same time. Both of us survived, lucky

[allenmyers]

While the lightning appears to go from the cloud to grown, a small bolt comes from the ground and makes a connection with that from the cloud.

[kolaiktomi]

Lightning struck about 10 feet away from me and flung me about 20 feet. It felt like a bad sunburn and left some really cool burn patterns on my skin, kind of like trees or roots. I'm still partially blind in my left eye but the initial strike didn't hurt all that bad. I've felt worse wiring houses with unexpected live lines. The recovery was a little challenging, but not painful, just annoying retraining my left leg to work after like a couple months of rehab. I died for 7 minutes and it wasn't all that bad. Best sleep I had in years prior. I know others have died for good or were more severely injured, but in my experience, I'm still only afraid of the winds that the tornado produced and flattened my farm. Being struck or nearly struck didn't suck as much as losing everything to wind damage from an F3.

[oliverscratch]

In 1973 I was aboard a Lockheed L-188 Electra flying over the Andes Mountains in Ecuador when the plane was struck by lightning. There was no damage, but there was a lot of screaming.

[libertylost]

I have been struck by lightning. I was at an air show. My friends and I ran to the port-a-potties and hid until the rain stopped. It stunk so bad I left as soon as the storm passed. I was using an umbrella. I didn’t see anything, but some guy yelled out that I was hit. All I know was my umbrella yet flying out of my hand and my thumb went numb. I heard the crack. I didn’t realize I was hit. About two years later my back started hurting and I was diagnosed with Syringomyelia. It is a vertical hole in the spinal cord. I am less than 1% that doesn’t know the cause of it. I think that lightning strike did it, but it didn’t start bothering me right away. Just a guess, but I was lucky I didn’t die that day.

[csc]

Years ago, my house was struck by lightning while I was on vacation. It took out the air conditioner, the tv in the den (but not its cable box), the cable box in a bedroom (but not its tv), the internal speakers on the imac (luckily, didn't obliterate the computer as this was before the cloud and everything was recoverable), and blew apart the house alarm siren in the attic. It literally exploded into tiny pieces. The insurance adjuster said he had never seen that much damage without the house burning down (although I don't know how many lightning strikes he had ever surveyed). I'm so thankful no one was at home when it happened. Can't imagine how terrifying it would have been.

[charlesdobbs]

In 78 I was in the 8th grade. Mom was driving to pick up a brother after a track meet. This Bolt hit a Huge Tree we were driving by at about 5 mph. I will never forget it.

[vtechnik]

I was in a forest in Tionesta PA in the USA in 1999. It was storming and a lighting bolt struck a tree roughly 400 yards from where we were. All the hairs on my body stood on edge and my ears were ringing. The tree imploded and was briefly on fire. It was insane. It physically rattled me and we (I was with two other people) had a moment of pure panic. It was intense.

[DacLMK]

Lighting strikes are no joke. Last friday on the 7th of July, we had a team-building from work to climb a mountain in the north-west part of my country (N.Macedonia). Everything went well on the climbing, but mid-way when we were descending, a powerful storm caught us, . We had nowhere for shelter on the way, so we had to walk down the mountain through the storm. We were at the risk of a lighting to strike us, but thankfully it never did. There were some close calls when I saw a flash, and a boom sound a second or two later. It was scary, and on my mind on the whole way I was worried if a lighting will strike me or the other colleagues. That's an experience I'll never forget. I didn't record any footage unfortunately, since I didn't want to risk my phone or the inside of my backpack getting wet.

[sherriianiro]

Several years ago had window open in summer at night - thunderstorm rolled in. I couldn't sleep from the noise & could see my neighbors roof from my bed. All of a sudden lightning hit their chimney & many bricks crumbled down - the boom was so strong and loud my floor shook.
That really instilled in me how unpredictable and powerful lightning can be.

[mayday]

I was at a camp when I was about twelve, and one afternoon there came a thunderstorm. Me and some other children had a great view over a forested area from the stairs of the old mansion where we were staying. There were magnificent flashes of lightning with many "branches" spreading across the sky. Then came a very powerful one, like a thick rope that went straight down, and when it reached the ground I was temporarily dazzled, as if I had got the flash of a camera in front of my eyes. A very loud thunder was heard.
When I could see clearly again a white dot had appeared in the green carpet of the distant forest. It hadn't been there before. I realized that the lightning had hit a tall pine tree and, in less than a second, peeled it - branches, bark and everything - and only the white wood under the bark was left. I will never forget it.

[tazmod]

We were working in the forest in eastern Oregon. We had just drove up to a place we were going to work in when lightning struck a big ponderosa pine tree about a hundred feet from our truck. The lightning blew out a chunk of the trunk and traveled down to the ground. When we figured it was safe we walked over to the tree and checked for any smoldering material. A lot of forest fires are caused by lightning strikes.

[billwilliams]

I had a lightening strike whilst piloting a PC-12 into Saskatoon several years back. Heard the bang, the instruments went a little wonky for a moment and then nothing. Wasn't until we landed and I was able to take a look and notices an 8" hole through the horizontal stabilizer!! Wild stuff!

[richardbeckenbaugh]

When I was in kindergarten I was in orthopedic braces and on crutches. The school bus let us off about a quarter mile from home. One day it was raining really bad and my friend flip and I stopped to shelter under a big tree. The tree got hit by lightning. It came out of the bark, ran down my left brace and into the ground. My friend shit his pants. I’ll always remember that day. Not for getting hit by lightning but for the fact that my friend shit his pants. When I told my parents what had happened, they didn’t believe me until they looked at the brace. There was a small melted spot where the lightning went in and a small melted spot where the lightning came out and went to ground.

[FF]

I had lightning strike right in front of me when I was younger. My hearing and sight were messed up for a few seconds afterward! You can actually feel the charge in the air when you're in the area it's about to strike.

[julianaylor]

When a closed vehicle is struck by lightning, it becomes a Faraday Cage, conducting the electricity....I was in a London bus once, on a road bridge, when it was struck....the windows and body buzzed....most of my fellow passengers didn't know what happened....but I did, I was stunned...the driver did too, he swore.
Back in the 1990s I had to call the fire brigade, when loose wires in a neighbour's gutter, were struck by lightning from a local supercell storm, which also did other damage. Their roof caught fire....luckily they were abroad, but they came home to a lost roof....they later rebuilt with the insurance, but the smell of the burning roof is still something I remember.