Are you ready for your close call of the day? Sarah Ribardi certainly was not, although who can blame her?
What was a quiet, dreary day for her exploded without warning into a hail of debris.
Lightning strikes are certainly rare, most people only ever see them from a distance and theyโre lucky for it!
It was Morgan City, Louisiana, where the lightning struck. Ribardi was walking outside when
lightning suddenly struck a nearby tree merely a few doors away.
It was accompanied by a loud bang and thousands of shards of bark and wood flying through the air!
You can actually see the tree collapse in the video, captured on what seems to be a doorbell camera.
The lightning is so quick that the camera actually fails to capture it properly!
Below is an image of the moment the lightning strikes the tree. You can see the upper portion of the image is more well lit than the bottom,
which is a result of the camera attempting to process the sudden change in lighting!
In the same image you can see Ribardiโs eyes closing and the shock coming over her face!
I canโt imagine how scary that must have been in that moment.
She had some very good instincts of ducking and running back inside as fast as she could!
You can see in the image above the cloud of debris flying towards Ribardiโs home, over the vehicle in the driveway.
That is the destructive power of lightning striking a tree.
Lightning strikes can raise the temperature of the air by as much as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit and contain a hundred million electrical volts. Thatโs hotter than the surface of the sun!
Ribardi mentions that it felt like she had gotten pushed by the lightning, which was right on the money! When lightning strikes and the air expands to create thunder, it creates a shockwave.
โThis pressure blast wave is caused by the superheating of the air around the lightning channel, which travels at supersonic speeds. It is this supersonic blast wave which decays, within meters, and transforms into thunder.โ -Ryan Blumenthal from the University of Pretoria
โThe overpressure generated by thunder at the source may approach 1470 pounds of force per square inchโ
Itโs extremely rare to have such a close interaction with lightning! According to National Geographic:
โThe odds of becoming a lightning victim in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000. The odds of being struck in your lifetime is 1 in 3,000.โ
Needless to say, Ribardi was pretty unlucky to have lightning strike so close!
Where she got off with a stroke of luck was that the lightning didnโt strike her and that all of the debris that you can see fly right by her head didnโt hit her at all!
Considering some of the wood chunks that were flying by were quite large and extremely fast,
Iโd say sheโs lucky she got away without so much as a scratch!
Although still, Iโm not envious of the shock that she must have endured from having such a sudden, violent event happen in her vicinity.
โRight after it happened, I was shaking a little bit,โ Ribardi said.
I canโt blame her! I would be shaking too!
You can see the video for yourself below, and I highly recommend you give it a watch.
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