On our hike yesterday we saw something that wasn't super unusual, although one doesn't always see them of such recent origin.
This first picture is for scale. You can see the people looking up at the tree. Notice there's a stripe on it.
I tried to take a picture looking up the trunk. The peeled strip was only 2-3 inches wide. Yup, this tree was hit by lightning, quite recently. We found strips of bark blown 50 feet away from the tree.
Guess what? Some of the lightning strike jumped over to a nearby tree. There are two of them!
These trees will probably heal and go on living. Of course, whenever a tree is wounded bugs or fungus have an easier time getting a foothold. If you pay attention in the woods you can find quite a few trees with scarred strips running down their length from their own encounters with a blast from the sky.
 | See the hike on which we saw this |
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3 comments:
That is pretty cool (not for the tree of course) I've never noticed anything like that on a tree but then I've never paid that much attention
A very dramatic image. Just glad I wasn't there to witness the event.
Huge sycamore near us bears a lightning scar but it happened twenty years ago and the tree is fine.
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