When Lightning Strikes...

We've lived in our new home for three weeks now and it has rained just about every afternoon/evening since we got here.  One week after moving in, we had a big storm in the afternoon. It cleared up for a couple of hours and then the storm started again that night. 

I put the girls to bed late that night.  Ella asked me to lay down with her on this particular night.  We hadn't been in bed for more than three or four minutes when lightning struck.  It sounded like it struck right outside the girls' window.  Andy had been in a different room and thought it had hit a tower at a factory close by.

It wasn't until the next day when Andy and Arin were cleaning up the yard that we actually found out where it hit.  Andrew found a hole in the yard, about a foot and a half wide, which had a all its dirt displaced a couple of feet away.  We're assuming this hole is where the lightning actually struck.

Then, we assume it traveled the wires underground, coming out here.

And it traveled up the tree and out here.

Or perhaps it hit the tree first and came out the other spots???

We hadn't been in the house long enough to pay much attention to the tree, but the owners said they do not remember the bark looking like this (how it looks now).

We also found several chunks of bark all over the yard.  I laid the second from the front and the second from the back up on their sides to see how thick the pieces were.

And where is the tree in relation to our house?  The house to the left (only the corner is pictured, is our house) and you can see the bamboo shoots in front of the tree (that's where we think the lightning struck).  I have personally never been so close to a lightning strike!

We had a power surge, which fried a few things: Andy's ethernet card, the router, the dishwasher, a dimmer switch on a set of lights, and the cable was snowy for a few days, but we are thankful that we were safe and it wasn't worse!