In article , Jethro_uk
scribeth thus
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 21:04:48 +0100, Martin Brown wrote:


You really don't want to be too close to these events. Tree trunks can
explode from internal steam pressure generated in a direct hit.

One night, in the 80s, I was walking, with some friends across Harrow
Hill. It was summer. Warm, not too humid, and dry. There had been no hint
of any thunderstorm.

We stopped and sat on bench about halfway up the hill, to have a
ahemcigarette/ahem. It was just after kicking out time.

Out of nowhere, a lightening strike hit a nearby (about 10m away) tree.
There was an almighty crack, and a branch *jumped* off.

A minute and a mile later, and my friends and I all agreed we had never
seen anything like it. Nor have I since.

It still puzzles me how a lightening bolt chose a tree halfway up a hill
with a sodding pointy church on the top with the mother of all lightening
rods.

Its just where the electric field was and where the resistance was less.
The old saying a Bolt from the blue has its origins in that.

I have seen a church get walloped, the catholic in Cambridge half way up
its spire around the 30 odd metre mark the spire topping out at 65..

The highest object isn't always the one that has the last path
resistance of where the field is highest...
--
Tony Sayer