One of my recent comments featured pictures of a ponderosa pine that had been seemingly blown to bits.
Several theories about the tree’s demise were advanced, but the consensus was that lightning would not do that much damage. Personally I had never seen a tree torn apart like that, and I’ve seen a lot of trees over the years!
I sent the pictures to one of my forester-friends, and he answered that it appeared to be the work of lightning. Not just any bolt from the sky, though. There’s a rare form that carries a positive charge rather than a negative one, and it is far more powerful. In fact, he had recently seen a tree that had been similarly dismantled by a suspected positive strike.
From the National Weather Service, an article titled The Positive and Negative Side of Lightning:
Positive lightning makes up less than 5% of all strikes. However, despite a significantly lower rate of occurrence, positive lightning is particularly dangerous for several reasons. Since it originates in the upper levels of a storm, the amount of air it must burn through to reach the ground usually much greater. Therefore, its electric field typically is much stronger than a negative strike. Its flash duration is longer, and its peak charge and potential can be ten times greater than a negative strike; as much as 300,000 amperes and one billion volts!
The article continues,
Some positive strikes can occur within the parent thunderstorm and strike the ground beneath the cloud. However, many positive strikes occur near the edge of the cloud or strike MORE THAN 10 MILES AWAY, where you may not perceive any risk nor hear any thunder.
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Here is a news story from Ohio, dated April 22, 2023, courtesy of WDTN. Lightning bolt causes tree to explode in Ohio
Saturday morning around 8 a.m., a lightning bolt struck a tree in the Canfield Village Green causing a tree to explode. The tree is a complete loss and the explosion even caused damage to the Canfield Village Green sign…
This lightning strike was also unique because it had a positive charge. Only about 5% of lightning strikes have a positive charge, so they are much less common than lightning strikes with negative charge.
The article is worth clicking through, to see a picture of the tree (what’s left of it) and a weather radar map showing the location of the strike.
Is that what happened to our ponderosa pine? I couldn’t find any news stories about the tree, but I did find a lightning map showing activity in the area on July 10. If any or our Astute Bucketeers can find more specific information, please contribute what you can find.
Now it’s your turn. What’s brewing in the skies in your part of the world?
I shall close with one more lightning pic.