I was golfing with two buddies about 25 years ago at a small par 3 course in Rockaway Queens. When we were on the 2nd or 3rd hole some weather started up, and several golfers fled the course. Being “tough” guys with some beers in us, we laughed it off and played on. Then around the fifth hole we were standing at the tee when a huge bolt of lightning struck. All three of us fell down and then got up and ran in 3 separate directions we were so panicked. I felt an electric shock go through my shoulders. We re-grouped and headed over to get some cover. Someone in a larger group assembled said “wow did you see that lightning?” I said “Yeah, it hit us!” There was some laughter and someone said that it struck “that big tree right there” about 30-40 feet from where we were, so our guess was that it traveled along the wet grass to where we were standing. Scary!!! We always joke now about that day we got struck by lightning.
Lightning fell really close to me today - anybody else had lightning striking too close for comfort?
In Africa a bolt of lightning hit close enough to my house that it turned on an outdoor fluorescent light that I never used, because I thought it was dead or the switch was broken. It went off after a few hours. I was freaked out.
I was at an outdoor festival in Germany when a huge storm hit out of nowhere. I was with my husband and 4 small children, and we ran by a grove of trees and got under the eave of a bathroom.
All of a sudden there was a huge lightning strike in the grove of trees and 13 people were injured. We were only a few feet away and it was soooo scary!
Summer of 1959, Sallisaw OK. Small storm came right at us as we just finished bailing the hay,
Two of us were sitting under the old tarp we had thrown over the tractor-baler rig. I was sitting on an unused roll of bailing wire.
In the next instant I was standing about ten feet away,out in the rain with no knowledge of how I got there. I was told that lightning hit the baler and 4 fingers of lightning came from the baler straight into my back and that I had actually jumped right through the tarp, (it was an old one) in one leap. I had 4 yellow dents in my back.
Then in 1977 My family, wife & two kids, a military friend his girlfriend were on his Catalina 27 sailing in Savanna Bay.
While going back in, a T storm came fast from the land onto the bay sporting double lightning strikes, marching right at us, the wind rose quickly to ‘way too much.’ Dropped all sail and ran downwind at times over hull speed with the keel kissing the bottom in some of the troughs of the growing waves. Sent all women & kids below, inserted the companionway hatch I was just moral support for my friend as he kept us down wind. I felt the voltage going up and the mast started making a kind of ‘crinkling’ sound I knew we were about to get hit. I yelled to my friend Fred to watch out and then boom. Next I knew I was flat on my back on the cockpit sole looking right up Fred’s backside and I hurt all over. I stayed there until we were in calmer water/weather before trying to get up because Fred had to get up on the seat and help pull me out of the hole I was in.
Later, he told me he felt the voltage also and then lightning hit the mast, ran down the port mainstay stay and jumped into my left shoulder.
I later told him we had a great adventure. he said , ‘Yeah, I was scared s***less too.’
Two days later he found his boat sunk at the dock. Come to find out the strike had made a small hole in the hull right next to the keel.
I do worry about a ‘third’ time occasionally, but I am careful so, "so far, so good.
Adventure, terror in retrospect.
Similar story here. Lightning strike to the roof antenna about 1998. Antenna motor fired. Tabletop antenna controller fragmented with plastic flying in all directions, but without harming anyone or damaging anything else. The TV and VCR never worked again, but there was no visible damage to them except small scorch marks near the connectors.
Another time, lighting struck a tree maybe 20 feet from where I was walking. I fell to my knees. I didn’t decide to drop to my knees as a safety precaution. I was walking, then I found myself on my knees before I consciously realized lightning had struck.
Oooh! I’d forgotten. The same neighborhood the firewood tree was in, my parents and I were coming back to their house and were about 200 yards away when there was a bright flash and an instant boom. “That was close.”
An hour later the neighbor across the street was knocking on the door, asking if he could use the phone because his was out – it was their house it struck. They had just got back from some place when they opened the door to a small amount of chaos. Judging from the damage, the bolt had struck the chimney, blowing several bricks off then jumped to the radiant heating system they had in the ceiling. The thermostat had been blown off and you could see where the wires zig zagging back and forth under the plaster had gotten hot enough to scorch the plaster.
Their golden retriever was unusually subdued and lying on his feet instead at them. I commented on that and he pointed to where a plastic plant in a basket that had been suspended from a bracket on the wall was now lying on the dog bed below it. The bracket was lying against the wall, dangling by one screw. “She’s usually taking a nap about this time of the afternoon.”
When my sister and I were approximately six and eight years old(ca. 1965), we were at my aunt’s house watching TV on the floor about six feet from the screen when lightning struck the antenna on the roof, traveled to the TV causing the picture tube to implode with a loud bang, and caught the console box on fire.
About forty years later I was casually looking out my patio door during a thunderstorm when lightning struck a tree in my yard that was about thirty feet from the door. It struck the crotch of the tree about ten feet off the ground, traveled down to the lawn, and straight toward where I was standing. Fortunately it stopped when it hit the concrete patio. The foot-wide strip that was burned off the tree never grew bark again.
Here’s some great dashcam footage of a strike from last week, I presume in China. I’m guessing the audio is NSFW if you speak Cantonese. 
Even more interesting considering that the Netherlands does not get many hits (~1-2 strikes per km^2 per year) on average compared to most places (Map). I’ve always lived in an orange area of 10-30.
