Lightning Crashes

I passed through a wicked thunderstorm the other day on the way to Windsor for work, travelling pretty much perpendicular to the very BLACK storm front. At one point, there were FIVE simultaneous lightning flashes in my periphery. The only good thing was that I passed through it quickly, basically in about a minute.

A short while later I got a text from Jane, at home....asking if I was OK. Apparently she heard the loudest thunder clap EVER, and retreated to the safest internal place in the house.

When I got home I found this:

Ash Tree Struck by Lightning

...or was it a large cat?

Yes, the loud bang she heard was one of the large ash trees in our yard getting struck by lightning. Not the lightning rods on the house...or the lightning rods on the barn....or the huge telecom tower across the field.....or the 43 nearby windmills.....

Nope. Our tree. Sure, it's already being killed slowly by the Emerald Ash Borer, and only has a year or two left....but still.....lightning? Was that really necessary???

We found tree shrapnel fragments for 50' in all directions, including OVER the shed. The tree itself looked more like it had been mauled by a very large and angry feline. There were actually strips of tree expelled with such force that they were sticking out of the ground like arrows!

Also started laying the checkerboard flooring in the dining room on Sunday, now that Bickey isn't throwing up on it several times per day....

What else are you gonna do on a 42 C Humidex summer afternoon?