Remember that time we were struck by lightning Labor Day 2012?

Friday night of Labor Day weekend we camped at Meadows campground just outside of Huntsville heading to Causey Reservoir. Ashley and I woke up around three due to the thunderstorm overhead. It reminded me of the storms on my mission and I sat awake most of the night just listening to the thunder and lightning all around us. The storm was so close it lit up the inside of the tent every time the lightning struck. We were sleeping in the same tent as Lindsey, Jace, and Gavin. The tent held up through the storm just fine and we were all dry. It was just hard to sleep with pouring rain and loud thunder. Then around 4:30 am the joy of listening to the lightning turned into feeling the lightning.

We were camped next to two very large cottonwood trees who at 4:30ish were struck, cracking one of the trees down the middle, fragmenting bark and pieces of wood all over our campsite, shocking all of us to the point we all felt like we levitated off our mattresses, leaving our fingers and toes tingly for the next day, and frying our cars to the point that our Honda is not worth fixing (fried the computer and alternator and who knows what else) and Jace's Tacoma even though fully insured and under warranty still is going to be totaled. You would think we would be mad about the situation but the truth is we are lucky no one was injured and what can you do, we got struck by lighting. Who can say that and walk away.

I did a little research on lightning. According to the National Geographic, "Lightning is a giant discharge of electricity accompanied by a brilliant flash of light and a loud crack of thunder. The spark can reach over five miles (eight kilometers) in length, raise the temperature of the air by as much as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (27,700 degrees Celsius), and contain a hundred million electrical volts," I also found out on the National Weather Services web page that your odds of getting struck by lightning in a year are one in one million but in a life time is only one in ten thousand. This is greater odds than I expected. It is also the second leading natural killer, second to floods. Also, 10% of people die, 70% suffer injuries, and the rest (us) walk away. I will count us lucky and blessed no one was seriously injured!!

 This is the tree they cut down and the burnt area down the middle. 

 This is the singed crack that ran down the whole length of the tree. 

 The burnt bark underneath all the trees around us.