“If you look out the window, you’ll go blind,” my grandmother promised. She was an ambulance chaser, never a stormchaser. Thunderstorms and lightning left her shaking like a chihuahua. She needed one of those ThunderShirts designed for anxious dogs but they hadn’t been invented yet.
Under Nan’s charge, if there was any hint of inclement weather, we’d retreat to the basement to quell her irrational fears of the roof blowing off before or after lightning-induced blindness. The super-sizing of her eyeballs when a storm was approaching was convincing enough. I’m a little lazier on drawing conclusions though and always hope for the best, especially when content on a beach towel. Insert Exhibit A here: Michamvi Peninsula, Zanzibar. “Let’s just give it another five minutes. It’s not that dark of a sky.”
When I lived in Entebbe, Uganda, I instantly channeled Nan when the rains arrived in mid-September. The rain volume was impressive but the lightning that followed returned me to my kid-self and Nan’s wide eyes. Her penciled on eyebrows (always in a dramatic, uneven clown-arch) amplified her startled look. Every night around 2 a.m. the winds would push in, screaming across the world’s largest tropical lake. The Lake Victoria basin is known for its violent thunderstorms and prolific lightning activity. According to the American Meteorological Society, thunderstorms on Lake Victoria kill 3,000 to 5,000 individuals each year due to the outflow winds and waves.
The first storm I experienced was in the furry company of Levi, Tinker, Scrappy, Juwa and Pops. I had three dogs and two cats squeezed into my super single bed at the Jane Goodall Institute office. Here are three of my bedfellows: Pops has the pole position on the pillow, while Levi (left) and Scrappy occupy the rest of the bed.
The opening in my mosquito net that hung from a hoop on the ceiling had a revolving door during the rains. Though I had to ‘sleep’ (yeah, right) curled up like a shrimp, I was glad for the safety in numbers. We all learned to sleep in a respectful way that ensured everyone had ample real estate but come morning, big yawns were unavoidable.
As the wind started to bend the banana trees into question marks and the fronds flapped like laundry on a clothesline, I knew. Soon the rain would fall, emptying the equivalent of the lake’s contents on the roof. The flashes would begin—-as though the sky was short circuiting. I remember holding my breath, knowing the penetrating rattle that would soon shake the house. The earth seemed to growl back with every spike of electricity that forked into the darkness. Everything escalated for the next two hours—-wind, rain, blinding lightning and thunder like I’d never heard in my life. I’m quite certain all of my bedmates had fleas and the chronic whinny of mosquitoes failed to distract from the end-of-the-world storm frothing outside. I wondered if I would leave Uganda with eyebrows fixed into Nan’s permanently alarmed position.
Even though the Entebbe storms were predictable, I never grew accustomed to the aggression behind them. The thunder moved through the ground like an earthquake and all the loudest kabooms I’d heard in my life still didn’t compare. Even when I was kicked out of sleep by a lighting bolt that struck a transformer outside my house in B.C.—that wasn’t nearly as loud or unnerving. Either was the propane tank that exploded across the river from another house and time.
Kim and I have seen ominous skies all over the world, some of them painted with a brilliant double rainbow when the fury was over. Many of them left us squeezing out saturated t-shirts as I’m the optimist who insists it’s going to blow over.
This past weekend, the storm didn’t blow over as we’d thought. Kim and I were sharply pulled from sleep at 3 a.m. when a sonic boom split the silence and splintered the tallest Scotch pine on the property next to us. The sky had been unsettled and flickering for hours with heat lightning and branching forks of electricity. Barrel thunder had been rolling across Lake Huron but the rain only pounded down for a minute of deafening drops before petering out. We thought the storm had silently moved south hours ago.
When this strike hit its mystery target, our hearts pounded like jackhammers. We both waited for the slow and awful timber of the biggest pine in our backyard onto our roof.
The sound of this strike so white-hot and piercing---it truly split the night in two. In the morning, amazed that we still had hydro, we went for a wander to see what may have been struck in the night. Last June, a lightning strike blew a towering cedar on the property on the opposite side of us into kindling. It happened in the early afternoon just minutes after we’d moved inside and pulled up chairs to read while the rain came down in sheets. There was no warning—-no preemptive thunder. It was one single high volt bolt that serrated and scorched the trunk—-wood pulp was projected on to our neighbours roof and clean over to our property. Our shared transformer was hit too—cooking our internet modem in a flash.
Hearing us crunching down the driveway, our neighbour called out to us. “You won’t believe it—come look. There’s a crater in my driveway.”
A Scotch pine had been severed into three far-flung parts. The current of the lightning strike was so powerful it travelled over 40 feet, leaving a deep, turned up channel of exposed roots. Rocks were thrown and clumps of dirt, skinned bark and splintered tree chunks remained suspended high in the surrounding cedar branches.
The current then boldly forced its way under her double-wide gravel driveway and arced up another cedar leaving a telltale scar up its trunk. The invisible force then jumped to the power line and came to a spectacularly damaging end, frying the phone and hydro lines and blowing the glass face out of two hydro meters on the pole below.
I suggested to our neighbour that we should stop practicing witchcraft! Lightning does strike twice—and uncomfortably, on either side of us. Our internet modem was fried again. Somehow, our direct neighbours were unscathed and retained both hydro and wifi. The next two houses lost all modern luxuries.
The forest between us looks like a bomb target or site of a tornado path but instead, it was one precise, searing lightning strike that serves as a reminder that Mother Nature is always in charge. And in her wake, life blooms anew.
If you get a rush from bruised skies, thunderclaps and funnel clouds, check out the Photographer series on National Geographic featuring Aussie stormchaser and adventure photographer Krystle Wright. She captures the fear and marvel of sweeping Texas storms (and more) in guaranteed goosebump-inducing images.
Do you have a too-close lightning strike story to share? I’m all in, let’s hear it.
I enjoyed this piece and really enjoyed checking out that photographer. I’m the kind of person that is both incredibly fearful of storms but also likes to peek daringly out of the window to watch mighty Mother Nature do her thing.
Have you heard of this guy, Roy Cleveland Sullivan? He got struck by lightning 7 times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan
I don't care what anyone says, I will NEVER tire of thunderstorms. They're mesmerizing (as long as I'm somewhere safe 😁). I have experienced a few thunder claps that have split the air in two and maaaan, talk about heart attacks!