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Nature’s Fury

Kristen | July 31, 2009

Yesterday while the boys and I had some friends over to play, we had a thunderstorm. I didn’t think too much of it, but apparently it was very close! Just a mile away at my parents’ house, this happened…

Two lightning strikes!

Overall, it seems like the damage is not too bad, considering the realm of possibilities, but there’s still a lot of clean up to be done. Here’s the tree in the pine grove that appears to have exploded.

And a close up of the bottom portion of the trunk where it’s detached from the stump – there are even junks of wood embedded into the ground!

The other tree is still standing, but not in good shape.

A fuse exploded in the pool house (yes, I said fuse – I guess that will be getting replaced soon!) and pushed the fuse box door open, and there were several bulbs in the basement of the house that were shattered. The transformer for the mosquito magnet is also toast.

Here’s where it was sitting on the deck of the shed. There’s a nice scorched area surrounded by lots of bits of plastic.

Quinn was having fun spotting the bits of plastic that were at the opposite end of the deck.

Here are the boys and me back by the tree that was downed.

It was near the property line but thankfully fell away from the neighbor’s house – though they had lots of sticks and debris on their roof. There were pieces of wood everywhere – even across the street! Here’s a piece of bark hanging on a nearby branch.

Here are Grandma and the boys in the pine grove standing by (or on!) one of the pieces of tree. Nearby lay a good 25 foot tree “shard” – just a section of the center of the trunk that had been split off and thrown a different direction than the bulk of the tree.