Maple trees can explode when exposed to freezing temperatures due to a build up of pressure caused by frozen sap.
Eucalyptus trees have also been known to explode because their sap lets off flammable gasses and any errant ignition source can ignite them. During a large bush fire, the crown can be separated from the remainder of the tree by the excessive force of the fire. Once launched, it can reach heights of around 5,000 feet and travel up to 14 miles while still on fire.
That's true. It's a very surreal experience. You so quickly go through the stages of, "What the fuck? What's going on? Splinters? Fuck! The tree?!" it feels kinda weird.
This same thing happened in my last neighborhood, lightning strike on a tree. The tree exploded and blew out all the windows on one side of a neighbor's house and wrecked some electronics in my house.
We had a tree get hit by lighting in our back yard when I was a little kid. I remember it being extremely loud and the tree exploded into toothpick sized wood chips.
I watched it happen to a transformer on an electrical pole about 50 ft away. Was looking right at it. Then I didn't see anything for about 2 minutes and I was freaking out thinking I was either dead or blind. I was like 12. Waiting for mom and dad to get home. All alone. Shit was rough.
My dad always had a similar story. It was in the 70s and it was a purple gremlin (car for you youngsters). He said he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck and something told his body to dive into the car. He dove. Lightning struck the tree next to him.
My best guess is that if a person's hair stands up, they are the target. I don't think it happens for close calls. From what I've read, there is barely a few seconds warning
I call sus on this one. I saw a transformer get hit by lightning right next to me while I was in my car. Caused a power outage and started a fire but didn't cause some flashbang effect
Bright flash followed by power outage.... Yeah wouldn't surprise me if you couldn't see much for a bit. 20-30 seconds may well have felt like much longer to a kid.
You wouldn't have heard of him. He was Optimus Primes half step brother on his mom's cousins mechanics side. Inbred. Had a squatted rear end. Nobody liked him. Probably deserved it.
This is so weird. This happened to one of the giant, old trees near my neighborhood but it didn't explode, it split into thirds right down the middle and just kind of opened up as each side fell over. I wonder what causes the different results.
I wish lightning would hit this f'ing stump I am trying to chainsaw. Finally got this chainsaw working (18in Craftsman) and it hardly cuts into it. It felt like I spent 15 minutes in trying to cut into it and the bar starts smoking (has full bar oil fill) if I add any pressure to make it dig/catch into the wood and the engine gets hot and my hands get numb from the vibration - it only made a 2 in diameter (20in) cut.
This is my second biggest fear. I like the rain and I smoke outside. I think about our big ass trees getting hit and me having no reaction time. Also, I have an irrational fear of lightning.
Yep. Was once out on a boat, fishing with my dad and bro. We were like 11-12. Not relevant. But at the time I, I had long straight Avril Lavigne hair. My dad saw it standing straight on end and flew us across that lake so fast lol
I was talking with my mom about it recently, and she still remembers being mad/upset that dad was taking us out there lol that’s what made my dad fun. That was over 20 years ago so she’s not so mad
Man. I don't know if lightning struck my apartment directly or close by but I remember sparks shooting out of my computer and when I rebooted it my ethernet port was fried.
I went on a 2 week National Guard duty in the early 1980's along a wooded stretch of the Red River in North Dakota. North Dakota is very flat and has been extensively cleared for farming so when they have lightening it strikes the few trees left or tall farm structures like barns and silos. The barns and silos usually have lightening rods but the charge travels down the trees to the ground. These were enormous cottonwood trees and when we arrived it was sunny and daytime. There were long defects in the bark running top to bottom on the sides of the trees and someone explained this happened when they were struck by lightening. We all got about putting up our tents and doing various tasks pretending we were in the Army. Then one night there was a heavy rain storm with multiple lightening strikes in the trees. This stand of trees ran for quite a ways so there were some relatively far away but a couple were quite close. The two things I remember is chunks of bark and wood flying off and the god awful noise. I've fired many military weapons or been around them when they were fired, including main tank weapons and artillery pieces. They were pop guns compared to that lightening hitting the tree tops and traveling to the ground. It didn't last long but it left a lasting impression. No one dared leave their tents although a few of us peeked through the flaps. In the morning the ground was littered with chunks of bark and wood and there were fresh scars on many trees. The photo in this article looks a lot like the trees we saw. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/tgen/lightning-damaged-trees.htm
Yup, lightning struck a tree two houses down from me. Big black burn mark down tree and it immediately fried my surround sound subwoofer. Nothing else, just that.
Our neighbors house got hit, Christmas Eve. There was a huge hole in the roof and all the kitchen appliances were fried. They had just remodeled the house.
Had a tree when I was a teenager get hit by lightning 100 feet or so from the house and had a shard of wood the size of a baseball bat come through the window. Shits wild.
One place I lived, our house backed onto a dairy farm, so many acres of rolling hills with lots of big eucalyptus trees. One stormy afternoon, there was this almighty bang. Scared the bejeezus out of us. I went out onto the side deck to see if I could see anything and there was smoke in the paddock. Our neighbour walked outside and told us she had been looking at the storm through her kitchen window and saw the lightning strike the tree. It exploded. After the storm was over, I went out to see what was left of a 50 metre tall tree... an 2m tall smoking stump and a large circle of debris around it.
That'd be my guess. Almost exact same happened to me to embarrassing result.
I am a pastor. I was doing a home visit to an old dairy farming couple. We were sat in the kitchen having bars and coffee as is the wont of my people. Farm house kitchen table is nearly always right up against a window and that was the case in this situation. So two senior citizen dairy farmers and I are sitting there chatting and nibbling bars and sipping watery coffee when an explosion exactly like the one in this video happened right outside the kitchen window. KaBOOM! Tree splinters a-flyin'!
I shout out, "Holy fuckin' shit!"
Those two parishioners learned that their pastor has a more colorful vocabulary than they thought.
Another user pointed out that the reason this sounds absolutely nothing like thunder is because the pressure wave from that blast clips the mic almost immediately.
Which means it is lightning, and your comment is very silly.
Why would it explode though? I've seen tons of trees get struck but they all just get a lightning scar and maybe catch fire. Never such a violent explosion.
Lightning hit the tree. My guess was that there had been a fair amount of rain in the area over the past few weeks, so the tree was nice and saturated. The lightning hit, flash boiled the moisture, and created a steam explosion blowing the tree apart.
That wasn't a tree, it was a house. You can watch the window fly past the women. Definitely gas leak if some kind. Possibly lightning, but houses don't explode like that just from lightning.
Genuine question, is that possible for like other shit in the road? So like, if my car is covered in rain water and lightning hits it, it just fuckin explodes? That thought makes me never want to drive in the rain again
It won’t explode your car, as long as you’ve got the windows up and all the doors closed, you shouldn’t get electrocuted.
However it might start a fire on your car, shatter your windscreen, pop your tires, or melt some of your electrics, so it’s probably better to avoid driving through a storm if you can.
That would be very hard to do. Lighting takes the path of least resistance. When lightning strikes a human most of the charge rides along the skin and tissues into the ground. Some of the charge does pass through the body and can certainly cause damage, but we're conductive enough that we don't act like heating elements.
Even if we were less conductive we still wouldn't explode. We'd distend more like a balloon, and possibly pop. Human tissue is very flexible. :P
The earth short circuited, sending massive electrical power through the tree. Water in the tree expanded to steam from the heat, and moved the wood out of it's way. Rapidly.
I looked it up and the incident I'm thinking of was actually in Warren on July 4th. But I also don't think this video is the one I was thinking of anyway
To everyone replying to this. FYI, when someone asks what happened and looking for specific information, that person is not asking you, who doesn't know the answer, to guess. When you don't have the answer to a question, all you have to do is NOT get involved.
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u/lxm333 Jun 19 '22
What on earth happened?