Lightning Trees

[El Jason]

Post em up. I love finding trees that have been zapped. It’s impressive to see what it does and what they can survive.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

 

[marksjeep]

 

[mtmuley]

I'll try to find a pic. There was a big Doug Fir that had the bark stripped and it looked just like a candy cane pattern. The FS put a Heritage Tree marker on it but some jackass cut it down for firewood. Wish I would have caught them. mtmuley

 

[Hem]

Wish I took a pic of a tree i saw years ago while bowhunting elk.
The tree fractured evenly and fell to the ground in a perfect circle around the stump. Kinda like " Pick Up Sticks".
It was so evenly arranged it was a bit creepy.

 

[Dsnow9]

Cool thread, I’ve had to remove a few in the city. That’s always a wild experience. I can’t find any pictures though.

 

[Dan-06]

Still on fire, cousin found it out hunting. Then called in a chopper to put it out.

 

[gouch]

I've always enjoyed looking at lightning struck trees, but I have never taken a picture of one. The most impressive one was in a campground called Wrangle Camp. It was a giant Doug fir with a four-inch-deep, six-inch-wide scare winding down all the way from top to bottom. But the cool part was that the top of the tree was blown off and was lying on top of what had once been the camp outhouse.

My first thought was that it sure would suck if somebody had taken shelter from the storm inside that outhouse.

 

[TheTone]

I remember seeing a giant larch when I was a kid that was absolutely blown apart from a strike. Chunks of it 5 or so feet long were impaled in other trees around it. Wish we had a camera along with us

 

[BigHornRam]

I had a couple ponderosa on my timber property get hit and the bark was stripped in a corkscrew all the way down to the ground.

One time my wife and I were going up the hill between Gardiner and Jardine, while camping at the Eagle creek campground. Just in front of us a lightning bolt hit, and when we crested the hill, there was smoldering sage right next to the road. We pulled over and tried to put it out, but it got into a pile of old wooden fence posts. We were going to go in town for dinner, so stopped at the FS station, and let them know. A guy was mopping it up when we returned.

 

[WapitiBob]

Saw a bunch when logging, never thought to take a pic.

 

[hank4elk]

Have some somewhere...have half a dozen pinions and junipers sagging and shattered here.

Watching a intense storm from a friends cabin in the Sierra's, a bolt went across the lake and hit a 12'dbh fir. Blew the center trunk out an it hit the cabin next to it. Destroyed that cabin.
The top came straight down and landed on the base (40' tall still),fell the other direction and cleaved another cabin in half.
20 cabins had damage from one storm.