Friday, March 25, 2011

A Huge Pine Hit by Lightning

We had quite a lightning storm on Saturday night. The power was knocked out to part of our house and our air conditioner started to make a strange noise. An electrician came out on Monday to look at the power situation and spent the better part of two days rewiring part of our house. Thankfully, it's fixed now and no electronics seem to be affected. However...

Electrician: Do you hear that buzz?


Me: Nooooo.


Electrician: There. That. Did you hear it?


Me: Hmmmm...yes.


Electrician: It's coming from the breaker box. I think it's your air conditioner.


Me: Can you fix it?


Electrician: You need your heat and air people to look at it.


Me: Oh.


On the upside, the electrician is the neighbor of the lady at the heat and air place. So without my having to do anything, the phone rang the next morning and we scheduled a repairman. He came out this morning and had it fixed within an hour or so. I asked what had happened. He said, "Oh, it was the lightning." Of course.

The following pictures are of the tree, some distance from the house, that we think was the reason for the trouble. If you look closely, you can see where the bark was blown off.



And this was last night's dessert, made from angel food dessert shells (store-bought) and home canned pears and pear honey. Yummy!

6 comments:

  1. WOW you were lucky with the lightening hit, it could have been much worse! Yummy dessert!!

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  2. Wow, never seen the bark burned off by lightening before, you were lucky:)

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  3. Must've been quite a storm!
    Shouldn't the bark be singed from the lightning? It looks like such a clean gash.

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  4. You all are right, we were lucky to have avoided more damage! To answer the question about the tree bark, what happens when a tree is hit is that the moisture in it is heated instantly. It's like a steam explosion in the tree!

    The bark isn't actually burned off, it's blown off by the sudden heating of water. (I looked that up, can you tell?)

    Oh, and the "pear shortcake" was delicious.

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  5. Wow, lightning is so scary. We have lots of strikes around our property and it looks just like that. The bark has been blown off.

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  6. Lightning's one thing I'm afraid of. You were really lucky.

    Those dessert shells with the pears look scrumptious. yummmm

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