“Bolt of Lightning”

~ Elizabeth

I have often used the phrase “hit like a bolt of lightning,” but it was real, not metaphoric, several nights ago. We had a very intense thunder storm in the middle of the night and we were awakened by a large boom. I went to see what had happened just as a bolt of lightning hit. It was so close I knew it had grounded very near us. Since my daughter lives next door, I quickly went to see it it had hit her trees.

She and we had avoided the direct strike, but it had hit in the next yard down, felling a giant limb from a very old tree. Taking the neighbor’s car window out, landing on the wires, and dislodging the support beams of the wires, the tree had done serious damage without injuring any people. We were grateful that it had happened in the middle of the night.

The storm was so isolated that of the roughly 1000 customers without power that morning, 450 of them were on our street. This meant that three electric company crews, one tree company and one police officer(to block off the street) promptly set up camp outside our house. The tree crew was fairly inept and we ended up waiting about three hours while they removed the limb. During that time we got to know the electric crews and the police officer. My daughter brought coffee and doughnuts for all.

I don’t want to leave the impression that not much ever goes on in our neck of the woods. I will admit, however, that the neighbors down the street, the man across the street, the man two houses down from us and a man well known to me all pulled out lawn chairs and supervised the goings on. They must have done the job because the power was finally restored, just in time for lunch.

24 thoughts on ““Bolt of Lightning””

  1. They sat and watched on lawn charis? Hilarious! It sounds a lot like Beetley, where the biggest event of note since we lived here was a neighbour’s garage catching fire and exploding. Some of us ran (in my case, walked quickly) down the street to see if we could help, but the owner was sitting on the ground outside his blazing garage, safe and sound.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. Somehow I knew all of the “supervisors” would be men. We feel obligated to give our two cents even though nobody wants to hear it. 🤣

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  9. It really is frightening. A few years ago, lightning struck the tree outside our bedroom window, luckily on the street side, leaving a long black streak on the top of the tree. We had to have the top removed, but the tree survived and is filling out, although quite odd shaped!

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  12. HI Elizabeth, we actually cut down a very old tree on our property because of the lightening. It was the highest point in our suburb and got struck just about every time we had an electric storm. It was rotten from the damage and I was worried it would fall on the house so I called in tree fellers. It was the safest thing to do. I’m glad you were all okay.

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