Close zap

[Ryan McGinnis]

No debate about whether it's a camera illusion on this one:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b83_1186800771

The sparks are interesting -- is that superheated wood? Don't see anything metal around.

 

[Danny Neal]

I guess the question is if there is anything metal on that fence just below the branches of the tree?

 

[David Drummond]

Man that looks like ALL tree to me. Could be the superheated moisture in the tree exploding and parts of the tree.

 

[Joel Wright]

Isn't it the superheating of the moisture and the sap in the tree that causes the bark of the tree to literally be blown off sometimes?

 

[David Drummond]

That's my understanding of it.

 

[Danny Neal]

It would have been interesting to see the tree afterwards.

 

[Terry Tyler]

its hard to tell if it missed the tree altogether and just hit the fence, but like david said...

looks like all tree to me...

 

[Angie Norris]

That was totally cool...
Wonder how close the tree was to their house, if there was anything left of the tree, and if anything in their house got zapped? Yep, the superheated sap can make trees go bye-bye if they get hit...it at least can blow the bark off.

 

[Terry Tyler]

That was totally cool...
Wonder how close the tree was to their house, if there was anything left of the tree, and if anything in their house got zapped? Yep, the superheated sap can make trees go bye-bye if they get hit...it at least can blow the bark off.

im tellin you, man...i have seen first hand what a lightning strike can do...

i have sent the pictures and a small report to another ST user via myspace, but i dont have it or the pictures on this computer, and we dont talk no more...

im talkin a 70 foot white oak tree shattered to splinters...sharp spear like splinters blown a good 20-50 feet from the tree itself...some of the splinters were actually stuck in the ground...and the part where the tree was rooted into the ground had a small crater with a pool of water at the bottom...

there was bark, and tree material scattered all over the forest floor...

im not gonna lie to you...i visited the site several times and didnt think that lightning was capable of such damage...i honestly thought that someone put a quarter-stick of dynamite in there or something, because it was crazy...

i talked to the owner of the property (who was there at the time) and he told me it scared the **** out of him...and it was definatly a lightning strike...

got a fresh new respect for lightning after seeing that kind of devastation...

 

[Chad Cowan]

Early in the morning on August 26th in a residential neighborhood in Narberth PA, a 40ft maple tree was struck by an extraordinaryly large bolt of lightning during an intense summer storm. The energy imparted ono the tree by the lightning was enough to hurl fragments of wood hundreds of feet away. One of the larger projectiles was propelled fast enough to impale an exterior wall of a house about 60 feet away. This is a short video documenting the incident.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=f6PJdAee7qY

 

[David Drummond]

Wow! I would love to get something like that on video. That was crazy.

 

[Angie Norris]

I wish he'd gotten the strike on vid, but the results...beyond incredible.
David, I'd like to get the vid of you getting the vid

 

[Esa Tuunanen]

Wow! I would love to get something like that on video. That was crazy.

Might be better to be behind bulletproof window...


I think maple can contain lot of "propellant" aka moisture so it should be good candidate for "explosive behavior". Also one obervation in this study was that the more waterlogged tree's outer surface is the less there's damage to tree itself and branches/leaves of maple surely protect trunk quite well from smaller rains leaving wood itself as only conductor. Fir which is porous wood and often contains lot of moisture reacts explosively very often.
Actually you can find data used in that study from here:
http://www.ekarvinen.net/salamapuu2007.htm
"Tapaus" means case number, bolt strength should be easy to find without help and "kerrannaisuus" means multiplicity

 

[David Drummond]

Well I didn't say I wanted to stand next to it. My camera is one of those high dollar ones with a zoom feature.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Good catch! Lightning produces these 'sparks' on just about every object it hits. With metal, it's just like a giant spot welder with all of the glowing shards. With wood, it's just like throwing something onto glowing embers on a campfire.