Lightning Trees

[Flylo]

I looked for years for a stump to use as
A pedestal mount. Found this old juniper stump on the banks of the Yellowstone one day while fishing. Came back the next day with a chainsaw and floated it out. It wasn’t until I got it home that I saw it had to have been struck by lightning.

 

[Sawtooth]

View attachment 393427ThisThis tree was hit just three hundred yards from our camp while The Northstar was trying to sleep. I packed in the next morning and we checked out the damage. Roots ten to twenty feet from the base of the tree had the bark blown off and exposed the roots as well.

 

[TheNorthStar]

View attachment 393427ThisView attachment 393428This tree was hit just three hundred yards from our camp while The Northstar was trying to sleep. I packed in the next morning and we checked out the damage. Roots ten to twenty feet from the base of the tree had the bark blown off and exposed the roots as well.

That was spooky, I was making peace with the idea of having to leave this world!

 

[npaden]

Here’s the one we saw on the Kaibab Plateau hunting a few weeks ago.

Knocked the top off.



The woodpecker holes had sap oozing out from when it got hit.



Whole tree.

 

[Hunting Wife]

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.

Grew up in that area. I remember seeing lots of lightning struck trees through there and up around Dutchman over the years. Some completely exploded with shards all over in a pretty impressive “blast zone”, some with the classic scars running down the trunk. My child mind always wondered what it would be like to see it happen.