When It's Your Time...

[JimC]

A 45 year old motorcyclist was cruising along on I-95 in East-Central Florida when he was struck by lightning.
He died in the resulting crash - if he wasn't already dead from the lightning strike.

The unfortunate event was apparently witnessed by an off-duty Virginia State Trooper.

Back in the late 80's I witnessed a motorcycle get struck like that.
That guy had a CB radio with a long antenna, the lightning hit the antenna.
Fortunately, he wasn't hurt and it didn't cause a crash. It looked like an air to ground missile striking the guy. On second thought, it looked like a laser beam from out of the sky. Or maybe, like a literal bolt of lightning.

But this guy in Florida had the misfortune of being struck on his helmet.
Here's a link to the story:
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/florida-mo...opstories.html

Here's what's left of his helmet:



When it's your time...

[cindyt]

Freaky. I dated a guy who was near a ground strike when he was a kid. It took a long time for him to fully recover.

[JimC]

Yeah - it's scary stuff.
I was fishing once with my brother in law at a gravel pit across from his house. A storm was blowing in, we could see lightning popping in the distance. We decide to make another cast or two. As we stood there a few feet apart, I felt the hair on my arms stand up. I looked at him, he was looking at me, then for a split second, everything just went white. I couldn't see his face for a split second. Then, I was looking at him again and he had eyes like saucers - I'm sure mine were too. We threw our rods down and ran like hell, went back for the gear after it passed. That's got to be about as close as you can get without getting hit.