We had a line of thunderstorms come through early this evening, before I came home from work. Walt called to check on me - he said that they had hear a crack. Turns out that the cracking sound was lightning splitting the tree at the end of the driveway.On my way home I saw pieces of the tree that had exploded out were down the road and across the street. Some had blown as far as our side door.
UPDATE ON THE TREE
The split tree has fallen across Fordham. I called 911 (although I wasn't the first) I was thinking that they would dispatch VDOT to clear the road, but they dispatched fire & police.
A few of my pictures even made it into the rotation on WWBT12 - Close Up, Tree hit by lightning, and Down for the Count
While we were waiting for assistance to arrive, we headed out to survey the damage. For a while there I thought for sure that we were going end up with a multi-car pile up at the end of the driveway. I don't think that anyone coming around either curve towards our driveway was paying any attention. A couple came within a few feet of hitting the tree.We were graced with the presence of Chesterfield's finest (police & fire). They shut the road down, which was really done by the tree, but they put out flares to keep the idiots from hitting the tree.
While all the manly men were out with chainsaws in the road, I visited with the next door neighbor who filled me in on her description of the lightning strike. She said that, "the tree trunk swelled up and then exploded. Boom!" The way she described it, it reminded me of the end scene of Highlander when he absorbs all that energy and blows stuff up.
The tree has been cut out of the road and thrown in the ditch. There is plenty of space for us to get out of the driveway. I'm sure glad that Dad and Sean are coming over in the middle of the week to take down the other trees that have been damaged during the storm.
It's going to be ugly in the morning - I'll post some after the storm pictures tomorrow.
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