Your wife was correct to make you come inside.
Several years ago, my Uncle was working outside. There was a little thunder in the distance but he wasn’t worried because it was several miles away.
Then, boom. A strike knocked him to the ground. He was very lucky in that he only suffered some leg pain for several days. He learned his lesson.
About a year ago, I was outside. It was mostly sunny with just a few clouds.
Then, suddenly came a bright flash and a tremendous boom. Scared the living daylights out of me. At first, I thought we had been nuked.
It was just one huge roar of thunder & an angry flash of lightning. What was so weird is that it came from nowhere. One strike and that was it.
I ran inside the house. A few hours later I discovered that the lightning had killed my DVR. That’s how strong that single lightning strike was. As I said before, it was a shock because it was a mostly sunny day with one slightly dark cloud. I guess that one slightly dark cloud was enough.
Lightning is so dangerous.
“Clear Air Lightning” — the proverbial “bolt out of the blue.” It’s not that uncommon for lightning to travel far from its originating cloud. In some cases, bolts have struck as much as 25 miles from where they originated.
‘About a year ago, I was outside. It was mostly sunny with just a few clouds. Then, suddenly came a bright flash and a tremendous boom. Scared the living daylights out of me. At first, I thought we had been nuked.’
30+ years ago the same thing happened to me. I was about to leave the basement garage carrying a large metal pry bar to rip out old fence posts at the top of a hill behind the house. Blue sky, few clouds then BOOM!
This was a point in my life where I think God was trying to get my attention.
Another close call with lightning was when I was a kid canoeing a river in FL with sever other folks. We reached a water hyacinth clog and had pull our canoes through the water along the bank.
I was the last boat and still in it when a bolt struck the pasture on the opposite bank. Everyone in the water got shocked and squealing and fetching about. The boat I was in was aluminum and I didn’t feel a thing—weird.
A buddy had his watch’s hands spin around and the dial glowed green then died.
One other time was when a group of us were bushwhacking through some Shenandoah mountains when a blow came up. We halted in what we thought was a safe spot to ride it out.
Lighting struck down the ridge from us and traveled up an old barbed wire fence about 10’ away. Everywhere the wire was stapled to the posts crackled and popped sparks.