Lightning hit a tree right next to my house and went through the invisible dog fence and fried a bunch of stuff in my house… The invisible fence and many other things are grounded now…

The bark on the tree literally blew off and there was a huge bang and flag of light when it struck. Scared the crap out of everyone in my house.

Approximately 25-30 meters. Hit the middle of the street while I was watching out of a window from an elevation of about 10m. It was an experience.

Couple years ago, lightning struck a tree on our neighbor’s property across the street. We didn’t see the strike, but we heard it; the tree basically exploded. Some of the branches fell onto the power lines and started an electrical fire, so it was a whole big thing. Bunch of people standing out on their driveways watching the police and fire department trying to deal with it.

It hit close enough to shock my through my all aluminum laptop. Felt like getting kicked in the chest. Somehow both me and the laptop were ok.

In school, my PE in the senior years was rowing. You basically gathered a crew with one experienced steering person, put the boat on the river, did the predefined round, put the boat away, and you could go home. Be there early, get you boat out quicker, row a bit faster, and you were done early.

One day, the teacher stopped boats going out shortly after we left because of the weather. We were at the farthest point when we noticed the thunderstorm. I can tell you, in a thunderstorm you don’t want to be the one high point in the middle of the river! So we ran the boat home, pulled it out of the water and carried it up the ramp to the boat house. When we were in the middle of the ramp, lighting struck the flag pole about 5-10m from the ramp. Light and sound effects simultaneously, and it was LOUD!

I don’t remember the moments after the impact, but we were told that no group ever had carried their boat up the ramp and into the building that fast.

Lightning touched down in my neighbor’s yard. My wifi access point and my laptop battery both got cooked, and I may have accidentally tought my kids a new word.

My apartment building in NYC was struck about 30 years ago. It blew about 10 bricks out of the parapet wall on the roof and, curiously, the intercom in the entrance played Disney Radio for 3 weeks.

I lived across the street from a power distribution station. One night while I was outside, there was a lightning strike there, and it lit up the sky like daylight for 2-3 full seconds, and the power for the whole town went out.

In my teens in the mountains of Colorado there were tons of lightning strikes. One summer, a lightning strike in our driveway took out our garage door openers and a TV.

This past summer, I did a 40+ mi bike ride that covered some very open areas of the CO plains. At my turn-around spot I could tell a storm was moving in quick and thought, “ah well, some sprinkles will feel alright.” Then I rode for about 9 miles in a downpour with lightning crashing around me while on a dirt road with just about nothing else around me (me swearing aloud the whole time). Finally got to some relative safety of some tight rock outcrops with overhangs. I was still outside and not totally safe, but it felt good to get out of that scary situation as much as I could for a bit while the storm passed.

I swear to god lightning came down a few feet away from us one day when I was hiking with my mom and her friend. For a year or so afterwards I got nervous whenever it looked like it might storm

I saw a RED bolt of lightning hit the ground about 30 feet away. It looked as thick and solid as a young tree sapling, and let out a mighty boom that sounded just as solid.

And it was red. Why was it red? I’ve wondered if it was just bright, and made my retina flare.

idk how close the closest one has been, because I’m usually inside when it’s storming. everyone in the midwest knows it’s the best time to sleep.

I do know there was one several hundred feet from my house a couple years ago, because it blew a tree apart.

I was driving through the country on a somewhat stormy day, when I happened to glance over and saw a bolt hit in the middle of a field I was next to. My immediate thought was “Oh, this is going to be LOUD.” A split second later, it was, like feel it in your chest loud. It was a such a weird physical feeling too, like a sudden buzz or tingling all over, I’m not sure how else to describe it. The cat I had with me did not like it at all, she wouldn’t stop crying for a good thirty minutes before she settled back down.

Several years ago there was a strike somewhere in our neighborhood, close enough to damage several electronics in my house, mostly via the network. I lost my router, and the built-in ethernet port on my PC.

When I was in high school a friend and I were waiting outside the school when it started raining. Lightning struck the field across the street. I wanted to look around the area to see if I could find some fulgurite (sand that gets fused into glass by lightning) but never got a chance to.

I have several antennas in my backyard (amateur radio) and have to disconnect my radios whenever lightning gets close. I can tell when a storm is in the area through the radio even when the weather around me is clear. I really should get a lightning detector.

On a related note, some government entity in the US (I believe it’s either NOAA or the NWS) keeps a public database of lighting deaths.

I wasn’t close, but lightning struck my house when I was a kid. When we got home, most of our appliances and electronics were broken. My Xbox (the original one) was sitting on the garage floor above some rebar in the concrete. The lightning went through the Xbox into the rebar and blew a chunk of concrete and the Xbox across the garage. RIP Xbox. RIP TV.

Insurance paid for most of it after they came out and verified we were indeed struck by lightning.