The Forestry Forum

My friend Julie Dodge sent these pictures to me, taken about 1 1/2 miles from my home in the city of Peoria, IL. Happened early Saturday morning. I went over to look at it tonight, but was pretty well cleaned up. I picked up some 6' long splinters. You could see some roots that had come partially out of the ground. One heck of a hit! Tree was maybe about 18" diameter. 

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/12704/locust_lightning.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1526347603)
 
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/12704/lightning_locust_2.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1526347589)
 

 I bet that made a heck of a bang when it struck! 

I've seen quite a few lightning struck trees but that one takes the cake. 

WOW!!
I had a strike here. Well more than one. But this one caught the slash on fire,than the shower came and put it out. Fire was no wider than 6 feet.

That is impressive. I had a strike hit a live poplar tree on the farm a couple years back, broke off the top, which was about bone dry when it hit the ground, talk about a fast way to dry lumber. 

We were coming out of the woods one day and saw lightening hit a pine tree across the road. The whole tree went up in flames. I've never seen one blown up that bad though!

 I've seen lightning blow large chunks out of a tree but never that bad. We had a cedar tree get hit and it blew every strip of bark and almost all of the leaves off one time. It really stood out even from a distance when we went down in the woods to see what got hit, being bright colored without any bark. There was strips of bark 30-40' away. It was in the middle of a thick cluster of cedars and none of the others (even much taller) had damage.