SCARY CLOSE LIGHTNING ! Crashing All Around Me

Intense lightning storm with close bolts striking trees and scorching the ground all around me. Frequent cloud-to-ground lightning activity occurred for several hours with this slow moving supercell allowing me to capture several amazing close lightning strikes on camera in slow motion. For licensing video contact hankschyma@gmail.com

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After an evening of amazing close lightning strike captures, I set out to find and observe the locations of several of the close lightning strikes, namely a tree and the ground close by. Along the way we encounter several unexpected animals and other adventures.

LIGHTNING HITTING TREE
The tree that was hit by lightning had several chunks of bark blown off. This happens because the super-hot lightning instantly vaporizes the moisture in the tree the channel is in contact with. The expanding air blows the bark off and also causes several cracks down two main trunks of the tree. If you look at the video in slow motion, it appears the lightning channel jumps from one thick trunks to another. Tree observations confirm this as two separate main branches or trunks sustained cracks down them. The tree also caught on fire at the site of leader connection. It appeared that particular branch might have already been dead and dried out... Maybe not.

LOOKING FOR A FULGURITE / "Petrified Lightning"
Since I knew the precise location of a possible ground strike, I tried to find a fulgurite. A fulgurite is sometimes referred to as "petrified lightning." When the superheated lightning strikes the earth, it can fuse the sand and other substratum into glassy tubes or bulks. The higher the silicon content, the more glassy the fulgurite would be I'd imagine. Unfortunately, the particular ground strike I was trying to locate hit a piece of machinery directly behind the tree. No fulgurites were found.

STOCK TARANTULA WASP VIDEO: Courtesy of Robyn Huges and Greg Rice

GREG RICE has an amazing youtube channel specializing in tarantulas and I highly recommend subscribing to it...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sJ2jEDbNXpIG1E37_9CLA

MUSIC: Composed by Pecos Hank

Видео SCARY CLOSE LIGHTNING ! Crashing All Around Me канала Pecos Hank