Lightning Struck this oak last week, it's about 50 feet from our house, it happened around 10:30 at night and sounded like a bomb went off causing us (and a couple of neighbors to jump out of bed to see what happened There's only about 20 feet of trunk remaining from an over 80 foot tree.
When I was maybe 3, I had a lot of anxiety about T-storms. So Dad was trying to condition me a bit. A storm came up one afternoon and he grabbed a step stool, standing me on it so I could see over the kitchen sink into the backyard. He had both hands on me to keep me from falling -- and reassure me. It was cool for a while. "See, just noise ..."
Suddenly there was a blinding flash simultaneous with a sizzling sound and an explosion, at which Dad nearly threw me across the kitchen getting me off the stool! About a dozen minutes later after the storm had passed by, we went outside. A Lombardy poplar, one of several on the property line and about 40 or 50 feet from the house was reduced to matchbook sized pieces all over our yard and the neighbor's.
That was about eighty years ago and I can still remember the post-rain mist and dampness with the strong smell of ozone hanging in the air! Alas, didn't do much to help reduce the anxieties!
Five years ago lightning struck an oak tree about twenty to thirty feet from our house and split it in half. The strike took out most of our electrical gadgets including tv, computers, printers and scanner even though they were all attached to good surge protectors. We had the tree cut back and somehow it survived and is growing. The appliances didn’t do as well and were replaced. Insurance covered the hardware but not software. Best to backup everything offsite