Lightning Strike
On August 21 lightning struck the two trees in front of my house simultaneously.
Sundays I normally go to the graveyard and tend graves. But that sunday (Aug 21), it was storming and supposed to be storming all day, and I didn't know if I wanted to go out in that just due to the fact that it's (still) tornado season here. So I thought, I'll just do stuff around the house like usual and see if these storms pass. I kind of felt like I shouldn't leave, so you know, I wasn't in a hurry or anything. Taking my time.
It was just getting dark, wasn't even raining yet, when there's a flash like the sun was suddenly in the room with me, and the loudest bang I ever heard in my life. I thought a flash bang grenade went off for a moment, I lost my hearing (but knew it would return), the hair on my arms was standing straight up, and there was a tingling sensation over my whole skin. I knew that lightning had hit either the house or right above it. Then the rain started, a torrential downpour.
I couldn't see because of the rain, but when it started to ease up, I saw that the giant locust tree out front had been struck. There were shards of wood everywhere. It was almost an hour later before the rain let up enough for me to go out there, and when it did I discovered that the other tree out front, the tulip tree, was also struck by lightning. And then I started discovering lightbulbs burnt out, the garage door was broken, the tv in the family room was fried, the lights flickered any time you turned on more than one, the wifi was dead, etc.
So after chatting with all the experts all week, we put together that lightning struck both trees out front simultaneously (extremely rare to have happen) and traveled through the ground into the house.
I want to say that we do not know if the trees need to come down yet. The arborist has spoken with us extensively about it and said that trees survive lightning strikes all the time, but it is possible since they are so old that they might die over the winter. Right now we're not doing anything but waiting to see if the struck branches start dying as that will help the arborist know where to trim to help the trees.
As most of you could tell by my username, I love cicadas. The two trees that they emerge on pretty reliably are these two out front, and I hear the adults calling in them all the time. As well, they were very popular with the Brood X cicadas last year, so if we lose these trees not only will the annual cicada population be significantly altered and affected, but all the billions of first instar brood x nymphs living off of the tree roots will likely die. Yes, I have cried a lot about this. Yes, I have researched how to have a funeral for a tree. Yes, I have also researched how to make a coffee table out of a ring from a tree trunk. I love my bugs and I love their trees.
Here are some photos of what the damage was
this is the locust tree
it also has three separate cracks in the base of it, but I didn't get good photos of those.
This is the tulip tree
we found shards of wood from this tree three houses down stabbed into the ground. 😨
this is some fractal burns on the leaves of the tulip tree from being struck
I think this is completely fascinating, and i found a bunch more with these patterns that i've pressed in a book and will be framing (i collect weird things i find)
This is a helpful photo from the back of the house that shows how tall these trees actually are
the taller one is the tulip, the rounder shorter one is the locust
the house is only one story but even if it were two, the trees would be taller than it.
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