Lightning Damages Home In The Woodlands

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ENID, OK - Residents of the Woodlands were jolted by a direct lightning strike just after 10:30pm on Tuesday night. A storm cloud moved over the neighborhood and with no wind or rain let loose of one huge lightning bolt.
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Most residents in the area heard and felt the jolt and many saw the bright white light. Many homeowners began checking attics, roofs and trees to see where they had been struck. Anyone near the strike was sure it had hit their property.
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I personally live in the Woodlands and thought the strike had landed in my front yard or across the street. It was without a doubt the loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard. There was a bright white flash in the neighborhood and then what sounded like a whip cracking into a megaphone.
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Every house shook and the crackling sound seemed to last forever. Social media lit up with people speculating where it had hit. My daughter had spent the afternoon at the home that was most affected. She received a message after the strike saying that the Stafford's house in the Woodlands had lost power and the garage was smoking.
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Doug Stafford, owner of the home, works for Enid Public Schools and was home at the time of the strike. He reported that nobody in the home was injured.
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It appears that the lightning bolt struck a very large cypress tree in the front yard and ran all the down the trunk into the ground. From there it blew several chunks out of the yard including areas where the water sprinkler was.
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The energy from the strike then traveled into the home where it blasted apart the sprinkler box on the outside of the house. A part of the box was found stuck in the wooden awning overhead. It then traveled into the sprinkler control box blowing it apart as well as the garage door opener control and into the fuse box where it tripped 8 breakers.
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The electricity didn't stop there. It entered the house and blew a wall outlet out of the wall into the middle of a bedroom. Half of the power to the home was lost.
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Wednesday morning several Woodland neighbors gathered at the Stafford home to see the damage. The cypress tree lost huge pieces of bark and has major cracks from its top to its roots. A few neighbors reported TV's and an AC unit out. Suddenlink service to the neighborhood was also knocked out in a few homes.
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The one thing that all of the neighbors agreed on was that it was the loudest lightning strike they had ever heard. One lesson to learn from the incident is to not hide under a tree during a lightning storm.
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Lightning Strike Enid
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