What's the closest you have been to a lightning strike?

Very close. My house got hit and that was insane to hear and feel that. Trees on my property have been blasted but the absolute craziest was a tree that got whacked 20 feet from my tent! I could feel my hair standing up right before the blast.

The coolest one was a strike I got on film hitting the tree out in front of my house 30 feet from my front porch. Watching it frame by frame is simply stunning to see.

I like to golf,so I would say close.I’ve never been hit though.I did however,stick a bobby pin in an electrical outlet.That felt great. ;)

Very close… I was in our basement during a storm and a bolt of lightning hit one of our very old trees in the yard. I heard the whole house rattle and the pipes in the basement started making a buzzing noise. I don’t know if it was from the vibration from the hit or if electricity was conducted through them, but it was scary either way.

About thirty yards, give or take. I was inside a barnlike structure (a former barn, in fact) and looking out at the storm through a heavy mesh screen window. When the bolt hit the tree outside it seemed to light up the window (I mean, it looked like a bug light), and I swore that I felt a ‘tingle’ in the dental braces I was wearing at the time.

The sound was so overwhelmingly loud that it almost seemed to beat the light, it was that close.

I was walking from the parking lot into a Target on a partly sunny day and lightening struck about 10 – 15 yards to my right. It struck a handicapped parking sign and then jumped along each of the signs parallel to my path. Scared the beejeesus out of me, deafened me, and made the hair on my arms stand on end.

One blew out the electical system of my first car while I was driving it.

I was struck, and laid up for a week recovering

@DrBill I think we have a winner. Ouch.

I could be mistaken but I think when I was a kid I avoided being hit by just inches. I was pedaling to school in the rain on my bike, when almost in front of my face I saw a flash of light instantly followed by thunder.

At the time, I thought to my self “shit I was nearly hit by lightning” and jumped off my metal bike and went on to school on foot. However, now days I am not sure. I suspect if I was actually that close that my body or the bike would have attracted the lightning to me, causing it to strike me. Now days I’m not sure if either lightning hit inches away from me, or if it was just a reflection and trick of the mind.

If it did happen, that is how close I have come, if not, I have always been miles away.

@poisonedantidote You can tell the distance by the time the thunder takes to get to you. Sound moves at around 1100 feet per second.

@Adirondackwannabe Yes, I’m aware of that, and the sound was instant, but it was a stormy day. Maybe another lightning strike miles away coincided with my position and a reflection to cause the illusion.

I was by a load of trees at the time, all I saw was a flash of light, no trees were hit, and there was no damage anywhere. I’m just not sure at all.

@Adirondackwannabe

Actually sound travels at 1,760 Feet/second about 1/5 mile per second

Yes. That was the day of my creation. This nut Frankestein who they said was a doctor connected me to cables which in turn were attached to a huge lightning rod. It got zapped and I got zapped and opened my eyes for the first time as this put together meatloaf. So there. LOL.

Seriously, yes. Luckily I was inside a passenger bus and after the lightning struck probably 20 feet away, it only smelled of burnt rubber afterwards.

The speed of sound varies with the properties of a the gas. From Aerospaceweb.org a good first approximation for the speed of sound in air in ft/sec is V= 1052 + 1.08 * T. Where T is in Fahrenheit 1100 f/s is pretty close.

I had one hit a large tree across the street, about 50 ft away. The bark exploded sending pieces all over the area. .

My house took a hit last March in a crazy T-Storm over this way.

I think the strike ricocheted off a transformer at the corner of my property and my whole house went ZZZZZZT and knocked the power out and I saw sparks like a giant sparkler cascading off my roof! No damage, but, an “electrifying” experience!

786yds, just an estimate of course, I couldn’t be bothered to measure it.

About 20 feet.

Out camping and lightning struck a tree located next to our camp site.

YIKES!!!!

Not very. About 300 yards, when a nearby school was struck in the middle of the night.

@poisonedantidote just about the same thing once happened to my dad when he was cycling home from work in a storm. The lightning hit the wet road and he saw it travel along the channel where the water was running. He threw himself off the bike into a ditch. When it had passed he got up and headed into the village, stopped at the local newsagent where the man behind the counter remarked that he was pale and shaking and looked like he’d seen a ghost. My dad’s reply… “I nearly was a ghost!”

Too close. Sitting in a backyard under an awning and watching the rain come down, about 15 yards in the corner a palm tree stump was struck and split open. The crack vibration or whatever knocked me backwards in the chair and the fence behind the palm tree stump was singed.

Two years ago lighting hit our front yard, traveled along the cable cord into my room and fried up my PC. I was on a wooden piano bench and got knocked off of that. Scary. Surge strips are important.

Sorry, I missed this when asked. I was just launching into asking this about lightning and saw it come up as a possible similar question.

When I was about 12, lightning struck and blew apart the trunk of a big pine tree that used to grow about 30 feet directly in front of the kitchen window in the house where I grew up. I was in the kitchen, standing in front of the sink right below that window. Fortunately, I wasn’t using the sink, because an electric ark perhaps ½ inch in diameter jumped between the faucet and the drain in that sink. The pine tree managed to remain standing, sparing us the chance it might have decided to fall on the house. But it had to be cut down.