# Strange phenomenon during intense lightning storm



## get-lit (May 24, 2012)

Some years ago I experienced something I'll never forget and I still don't understand what was occurring. It was during the most intense lightning storm I'd ever seen. As it began, I watched through the front window of my house as a flurry of lightning strikes slowly approached our neighborhood from across the field. I ran to grab my video camera to capture the strikes, but as it drew closer I became frightened and went to the back of the house and filmed through the back sliding door.

The lightning came over the house and the constant onslaught of explosive strikes was terrifying. As the lightning continued to strike around the house, the air inside the house began to glow reddish orange. The glow was in the form of a large fog within the room and it spiraled down the hall into the smaller rooms. My camcorder seemed to still be on because the LEDs were on, but the LED screen was white and tape spools stopped rolling. I put it down and noticed a cigarette lighter with LEDs laying on the counter was flashing as if it were being used. The microwave next to me beeped and the LED display lit up all eights. I heard several other electronics beeping throughout the house. I was too terrified to budge an inch. I yelled to my wife in our bedroom down the hall, "are you ok?" and "are you seeing this?" she yelled back yes to both and stayed put as well. The TV in the living room was glowing brightly, the same reddish orange as the air in the room.

The strangest, most intriguing, and most terrifying effect of the phenomenon is much harder to describe, because it was more of a sensation. It felt like some sort of reality warp. It very well could have been an electrical field affecting my head but the sensation seemed as if it were something straight out of the Philadelphia Experiment. While I stood there, it just seemed like I was standing in the middle of a timeless nowhere, with everything around me, including myself, being nothing more than energy. Again, it was probably an electrical field affecting my head, but it felt surreal.

I continued to stand completely still. The lightning strikes subsided as the flurry passed over the neighborhood. The glow slowly faded away. My wife and I ran to each other, held each other, and then cautiously explored around the house together. The TVs throughout the house all continued to glow for several more minutes and I smelled strong ozone. Outside, car alarms were going off and the discharge street lights were still glowing. A house behind ours caught fire and the the emergency vehicles came.

Can anyone tell me what the heck happened? Over the years, the closest thing I could find online is ball lightning, but this didn't match the characteristics of ball lightning. Any ideas?


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## Th232 (May 24, 2012)

Sounds like the lightning storm ionised all the air around/in the house, which could explain all the electrical equipment going haywire, but beyond that I'm not sure.


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## 127.0.0.1 (May 24, 2012)

just what happens when you are inside concentrated zone of electrical doom.


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## SimulatedZero (May 24, 2012)

127.0.0.1 said:


> just what happens when you are inside concentrated zone of electrical doom.



LOl, zone of electrical doom. You mean a fear cage? :nana:

I have had similar experiences when I was younger, though I never had the air ionize like that. I have had my TV's flicker and various electronics go somewhat haywire. At one point one of my little sisters talking stuffed animals starting talking when no one touched it, spooked all of us pretty badly. Of course, the fact that lightning had just struck a tree 50 ft. from our house was not lost on us, infact it was pretty hard to ignore. The worst thing that happened with my electronics was the dvd/ vcr player spit out the movies that were in it. Other than being spooked a little nothing serious happened. All the stuff worked fine later. The amount of moving energy in the inducts a current into electronic items, causing them to act as if they had been supplied power. At least, that would be my guess. Shame you couldn't catch video of it, that would have been quite a sight to see.


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## get-lit (May 24, 2012)

I read up on ionized air and now I'm fairly convinced that's what it was. There's a lot of info on Wikipedia and other sites about ionized air glow. It explains the affects on electronics, discharge lamps, and tube televisions, as well as the glowing air and the smell of ozone.

What I didn't understand is why the color of the glowing air was red/orange, when it's usually observed as a purple/blue in naturally occurring air. The common gasses which glow red/orange are helium, neon, and nitrogen oxide, which were not present in the house. However, ionized air not only produces ozone, but it produces nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen oxide can make inonized air glow red/orange.

Maybe our house was like a giant microwave...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTborO67PZE&feature=related

Edit: The glow in the house was less vivid than in that video, more of a glowing fog rather than a distinct shape. Here's the closest pic I could find that resembles what it looked like...


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## PhotonWrangler (May 26, 2012)

That had to be ionized air. Wow, what an experience! That would have freaked me out also It's amazing what nature can do in it's moments of electrical fury.

BTW, the thing about the tape spools stopping - that was likely an extreme case of stiction - a combination of static and friction. All videotape experiences this from time to time, only to a much lesser degree than what you've experienced.


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## Illum (May 26, 2012)

Ionized air for sure. I have never seen something like that but have built earth grounded LEDs to tell me if the thunder was getting too close. Wire two LEDs together in opposing ends so that both sides had both a cathode and an anode, ground one end to earth and the other connected to an "antenna." When the strike zones are passing over, LEDs would sometimes glow. The last time where it glowed brightly was Hurricane Charley back in 2004. When I saw more than one of these things glowing in the house I started unplugging everything. Then, as predicted, within seconds every flash came with a simultaneous crash. Theres a funny feeling in the house [especially smells of something metallic burning, ozone maybe?] and I can feel my skin tingle. I have, however, never witnessed the red cloud in the house. We lost two trees and a stepdown transformer that year, the latter was a direct strike that blew out all of the house's built-in offline smoke detectors.
What you are describing is a potentially catastrophic situation, as anything with inductive properties all build up a charge, wires in conduits will heat up, breakers can open but the house circuit will still be charged... purple aura could have been ionized nitrogen... red, I'm lost on red.


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## TedTheLed (May 26, 2012)

:devil: sulfur?


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## jhc37013 (May 27, 2012)

The time warp you describe is interesting as I may have experienced something similar as a tornado skipped over our house and touched down a few hundred yards away.

I felt a weird distortion just for a few seconds and I immediately asked the other 4 adult family members if they "felt that", I did not have to describe it to them they immediately knew what I was talking about. It was exactly as you described and I felt time came to a crawl like everything was in slow motion. 

There was lightning in the storm but I always assumed it was something with the barometric pressure suddenly and drastically changing, I know nothing about pressure and storms and could be totally wrong but that's just how we justified what we all felt.


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## get-lit (May 27, 2012)

I think the ionized air produced nitrogen oxide which burns red/orange, just like in the microwave video I linked to. I asked my ex-wife (wife at the time) what she recalled and she said she remembers seeing green as well as red/orange.

She also reminded me that we experienced this more than once. The second time was not indoors however, it was during the infamous Buffalo October storm of 2006. I was driving in Amherst when it hit hard and the sky was glowing green with red/orange about 150 feet above me, but not around me. My car windows kept going up and down, the radio turned on and off, various check engine lights flickered, the engine sputtered at times, and the transmission would randomly shift. The snow was coming down hard and the windows would not respond when pressing the buttons, they just did their own thing. I only had a short distance to go, but when I got there I had to wait a while for all four windows to be up at the same time before I shut off the car, otherwise the car would have been buried both inside and out.

My ex-wife was at home during the October storm, out in the rural area about 15 miles away, and she remembers seeing the same glow off in the distance.

As far as the sensation when the glow from the lightning was in the house, subjectively it felt like reality was being put in a blender. Maybe I was in shock but my awareness was through the roof. I remember thinking to myself how incredible it was, while at the same time how terrible it was. It escalated to quickly, I thought things could end badly well before I even knew what was happening. It was one of those things where your instinct makes you immediately choose to NOT stick around and watch something most interesting because you fear for your life, except I didn't have a choice because explosive bolts were striking all around outside. Like I said, the house behind us caught fire. Also, my ex-wife reminded me we lost half a large tree just five feet from the house.


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## Illum (May 27, 2012)

jhc37013 said:


> There was lightning in the storm but I always assumed it was something with the barometric pressure suddenly and drastically changing, I know nothing about pressure and storms and could be totally wrong but that's just how we justified what we all felt.



I think you might have hit the spot on that, I dug up an article from "Business and Commercial Aviation" magazine [April 2003] regarding high altitude hypoxia where the experimenters conducted test by putting subjects at a chamber altitude of 18,000 ft, had them remove their oxygen masks and read a series of eye charts, color charts, and sectional aeronautical charts. After a few minutes the lights were dimmed and subjects were asked to make the same observations.

one test subject recalled that "once the lights were dimmed, only yellow and orange were visible on the color chart, and the eye chart was completely illegible, as well as the sectional chart." After a short time resuming oxygen supply, all three charts can be read. 

Reprinted from the April 2003 issue of Business & Commercial Aviation magazine 
http://www.warbirddepot.com/library/safety/high_alt.pdf
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9549683/exploring-high-altitude-physiology

Is there a possibility that the barometric pressure was so low that you were suffocating and not know it? Had the barometric pressure been higher, the rapid ionization would not have been so severe. Likely there are other ionization colors around you but the visible color spectrum your eyes originally can distinguish happened to be limited to the red-orange area because of the low pressure?

Its assume you are standing in your room, then all of a sudden all you see is unicolor all around you. Without the perception of depth and volume, no doubt it would feel really odd.



get-lit said:


> The second time was not indoors however, it was during the infamous Buffalo October storm of 2006. I was driving in Amherst when it hit hard and the sky was glowing green with red/orange about 150 feet above me, but not around me. My car windows kept going up and down, the radio turned on and off, various check engine lights flickered, the engine sputtered at times, and the transmission would randomly shift. The snow was coming down hard and the windows would not respond when pressing the buttons, they just did their own thing. I only had a short distance to go, but when I got there I had to wait a while for all four windows to be up at the same time before I shut off the car, otherwise the car would have been buried both inside and out.



oo: :thinking: :green:  :duck: :huh2: 

Inducted charges through ionized air explains why the power windows and radio went  but transmission? I'm a  :fail: when it comes to cars but... aren't automatic transmissions based on engine revolutions? Or is it electrical as well?


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## PhotonWrangler (May 27, 2012)

Illum said:


> Inducted charges through ionized air explains why the power windows and radio went  but transmission? I'm a  :fail: when it comes to cars but... aren't automatic transmissions based on engine revolutions? Or is it electrical as well?



Illum, I'm not a car expert by any stretch of the imagination, but i know that the transmissions in modern cars are controlled by the car's computer to optimize the drivetrain. That would explain it.


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## get-lit (May 28, 2012)

Yes, the transmission was computer controlled.

As far as affects from rapid pressure changes, I recall becoming a bit disoriented when driving a boat fast with my head above the windshield, when blasting through wind gusts and changing wind directions and temps etc.


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## Toohotruk (May 28, 2012)

This is a very interesting thread...


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## SimulatedZero (May 28, 2012)

This is interesting. I was going to say that the surreal feeling was caused by the high EMF that was around you. But as it turns out there is little no evidence to support that hypothesis. I had always thought that being in the proximity of exposed wiring caused paranoia, mild hallucinations, surrealness, and a whole host of things. The only evidence to support that is a blind study conducted by a man in France. He set a booth near a public square and asked people to sit inside it for a short while. For some people he would run a current through some wiring in the booth, those people would then come out and say that they felt they were being watched. In some cases, people said they could see things out the corner of their eye. All the people who didn't have the current running around them just got a bit bored. 

If we are to go by that study, then I would say that the intense EMF that was around you enhanced whatever fear you were feeling at the time. I could very easily imagine being paralyzed or something similar in that instance. Take the fear you were feeling and then amplify it like that and I think it would be too much for most people. Then add to that the power of the lightning strikes. You would be able to feel the raw power of the strikes. On top of the you know in the back of your mind that those strikes are incredibly powerful. That would add to the intimidation of it all.


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## get-lit (May 28, 2012)

Maybe it had a lot to do with temporal perception becoming more acute when things occur in rapid succession, like while you're experiencing a car accident. Your awareness spikes to take everything in as if it's your last moment, and when the rate of observation is happening so fast, time seems to stand still. The culmination of rapid bright lightning flashes and their explosions, as well as things I've never seen before; the electronics going nuts, and the glowing air. It felt like I was in an escalating high pressure environment.

Check out this Wikipedia link. It describes an illusion of time as... a distortion in sensory perception caused when the time between the occurrence of two or more events is very short (typically less than a second).

...The kappa effect is a form of temporal illusion verifiable by experiment whereby time intervals between visual events are perceived as relatively longer or shorter depending on the relative spatial positions of the events.

Also the next section explains that some stimulants can cause us to overestimate time intervals. Who knows, maybe the strong EMI was that sort of stimulant, but I'm thinking the rapid succession of strange and overwhelming events was enough alone.


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## SimulatedZero (May 28, 2012)

Nifty, I had no idea that distance could distort time perception. You sir are quite lucky, really. I would love to see something like that, but I have a feeling that I won't get that chance. There are lots of people who have SEEN an aurora borealis, but you are the only one I know of that has actually been IN an aurora borealis.


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## TedTheLed (May 28, 2012)

magnetic waves can certainly affect your thought processes, for example the god helmet, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

you may have been in the 'god room' for a few moments, but as we know from the movie contact, it could have seemed like hours..


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## TEEJ (May 28, 2012)

Yeah, the barometric drop, combined with the adrenaline rush and the trauma of what was being witnessed, ionization, and the induced electrical currents from the magnetic fields, would pretty much explain everything you experienced...which was awesome.



My house was hit by a tornado many years back...and the air is sucked right out as it approaches...very freaky.

Glad you're OK!


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## PhotonWrangler (May 28, 2012)

get-lit said:


> Maybe it had a lot to do with temporal perception becoming more acute when things occur in rapid succession, like while you're experiencing a car accident. Your awareness spikes to take everything in as if it's your last moment, and when the rate of observation is happening so fast, time seems to stand still. The culmination of rapid bright lightning flashes and their explosions, as well as things I've never seen before; the electronics going nuts, and the glowing air. It felt like I was in an escalating high pressure environment.



To use a film analogy, the brain seems to go into 'overcrank' mode when an event of this magnitude and speed occurs, speeding up the rate that it writes information into memory. When that memory is accessed in normal circumstances, the "playback" looks like it's in slow motion because of the difference in read-write speeds.

And I'm also glad you're ok.


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## The_Police (May 28, 2012)

Thanks for sharing an epic story! I can't imagine the sensation that you felt during all that.


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## Illum (May 28, 2012)

SimulatedZero said:


> There are lots of people who have SEEN an aurora borealis, but you are the only one I know of that has actually been IN an aurora borealis.


That is a very well put analogy :thumbsup:


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## SimulatedZero (May 29, 2012)

Illum said:


> That is a very well put analogy :thumbsup:



Thank you kind sir.


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## get-lit (May 29, 2012)

PhotonWrangler said:


> To use a film analogy, the brain seems to go into 'overcrank' mode when an event of this magnitude and speed occurs, speeding up the rate that it writes information into memory. When that memory is accessed in normal circumstances, the "playback" looks like it's in slow motion because of the difference in read-write speeds.
> 
> And I'm also glad you're ok.



Exactly. I have more detail of that short time locked in my long term memory than everything else that happened in that entire 5 year period.

As a side note, I'm now terrified of lightning. Last night I had to sleep downstairs because a lightning storm was coming in.


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## TedTheLed (May 29, 2012)

come to think of it...were the lightning strikes near your home to existing lightning rods?

hopefully they were. if not, you might consider putting up lightning rods near or on your house, so that excess energy welling up from the ground may escape into the air, and not build up so greatly in your home..


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## get-lit (May 29, 2012)

Sure have them now, but not then. Still get chills when I hear lightning coming in.


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## TedTheLed (May 29, 2012)

well, stay off of wired telephones during storms, and you should be ok! :thumbsup:

dont mean to scare you, but...sometimes I wonder if this isnt the reason wireless phones have become almost universal:

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1985/A...-To-Death/id-ac194f95655f5422c12748d9a75b2e1f


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## Toohotruk (May 29, 2012)

And out of the shower.


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## dc38 (May 29, 2012)

Tesla effect? Perhaps your area was the target of a mass Tesla field test :X


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## Illum (May 30, 2012)

Toohotruk said:


> And out of the shower.



This is true, many houses have their earth ground tied to the same copper pipes that carries your water. I try to avoid showers and washing when the thunder and lightning is most severe. If I have to wash, I have a few buckets of water [called "technical water"] in the washtub to handle occasional uses.


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## fyrstormer (Jun 3, 2012)

Illum said:


> Ionized air for sure. I have never seen something like that but have built earth grounded LEDs to tell me if the thunder was getting too close. Wire two LEDs together in opposing ends so that both sides had both a cathode and an anode, ground one end to earth and the other connected to an "antenna." When the strike zones are passing over, LEDs would sometimes glow. The last time where it glowed brightly was Hurricane Charley back in 2004. When I saw more than one of these things glowing in the house I started unplugging everything. Then, as predicted, within seconds every flash came with a simultaneous crash. Theres a funny feeling in the house [especially smells of something metallic burning, ozone maybe?] and I can feel my skin tingle. I have, however, never witnessed the red cloud in the house. We lost two trees and a stepdown transformer that year, the latter was a direct strike that blew out all of the house's built-in offline smoke detectors.
> What you are describing is a potentially catastrophic situation, as anything with inductive properties all build up a charge, wires in conduits will heat up, breakers can open but the house circuit will still be charged... purple aura could have been ionized nitrogen... red, I'm lost on red.


What an instriguing idea. I must try this.


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## fyrstormer (Jun 3, 2012)

Illum said:


> This is true, many houses have their earth ground tied to the same copper pipes that carries your water. I try to avoid showers and washing when the thunder and lightning is most severe. If I have to wash, I have a few buckets of water [called "technical water"] in the washtub to handle occasional uses.


Newer houses use PEX plastic pipes to carry water. The water itself is still electrically conductive though.


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## Illum (Jun 3, 2012)

fyrstormer said:


> What an instriguing idea. I must try this.



I had the idea from reading a historical article about Ben Franklins' lightning Bells. 
The concept is simpler than mine, two bells with one knocker ball suspended in between and isolated from both. One bell is grounded and the other is tied to a rod. When a storm is overhead the bells, acting as an air core capacitor, builds a charge. When either side reaches the potential to attract the ball is when the jingles begin. This only occurs when the storm is directly above and, as your house had seen: ambient ionization. Having bells like that in your vicinity acting as a lightning rod is a very dangerous contraption to risk. 

So, I considered something with modern technology. I used red LEDs, whose foward voltages are low enough to light up dimly when theres a hefty amount of charge in the air. At some point I do recall putting in a few nonpolarized capacitors to give me a solid reading. Unfortunately I have nothing to show for it because being outdoors what I have had installed all expired from corrosion. Let me see if I can find the ones I had indoors. After our last paint job I have them removed, as they were connected to the AC receptacle's "ground" screw.


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## LightSward (Mar 2, 2013)

Ionized air for sure. Two separate things happened to me that together sound like what you had happened. I was out camping when a storm kicked in from nowhere, bolts of lightening crashing all around us. I opened the tent and noticed all the air around us was glowing green, brighter near the ground. It looked kind of like it was slowly flowing down the hillside. I could smell ozone, hear bees that weren't there and figured the next lightening bolt was hitting my tent or the pool of water forming instantly everywhere around our camp spot. A big crack of lightening a hundred yards or closer, and the storm ended, glow subsided. I felt strange through all this but figured maybe just an adrenaline rush, I don't know, but I was almost crying to God about being a better person, sort of thing when the ground was glowing.

The second strange "Ionized" air occurrence was when I built a Van De Graaff, (yes spelled with two a's and f's), generator. Static is killed by moisture and dust, so during my construction of the generator, I kept a sterile environment and ran a dehumidifier and cleaned every part with rubbing alcohol and purified air purged everything in a ten foot radius. The results where "shocking"...if you'll pardon the pun. I not only generated two foot long sparks, (which feel really good on tight sore muscles), making LED anything in the vicinity of ten feet or more, light up, new in box or burned out CFL's light up for a minute, but most dramatically, managed to generated 'roaming bands of "Saint Elmo's Fire"' in the room the Van De Graaff generator was operating in. These literally looked like classic sheet covered ghost, that seem to interact with anyone in the room, sometimes releasing a big spark if you got too close...totally awesome...my link to after I got some dust in the machine, sparks still pretty big. "click 'it'" or copy and paste --->>>

:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgH4vh8rc20&list=UUh_C6F3sc_UPHDN7obFXz4Q


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## SeamusORiley (Mar 3, 2013)

get-lit said:


> Some years ago I experienced something I'll never forget and I still don't understand what was occurring. It was during the most intense lightning storm I'd ever seen. As it began, I watched through the front window of my house as a flurry of lightning strikes slowly approached our neighborhood from across the field. I ran to grab my video camera to capture the strikes, but as it drew closer I became frightened and went to the back of the house and filmed through the back sliding door.
> 
> The lightning came over the house and the constant onslaught of explosive strikes was terrifying. As the lightning continued to strike around the house, the air inside the house began to glow reddish orange. The glow was in the form of a large fog within the room and it spiraled down the hall into the smaller rooms. My camcorder seemed to still be on because the LEDs were on, but the LED screen was white and tape spools stopped rolling. I put it down and noticed a cigarette lighter with LEDs laying on the counter was flashing as if it were being used. The microwave next to me beeped and the LED display lit up all eights. I heard several other electronics beeping throughout the house. I was too terrified to budge an inch. I yelled to my wife in our bedroom down the hall, "are you ok?" and "are you seeing this?" she yelled back yes to both and stayed put as well. The TV in the living room was glowing brightly, the same reddish orange as the air in the room.
> 
> ...



Many years ago, I was at a community pool with family and friends when a storm hit. We initially went under a large canopy with many others but the loudspeaker called us away. People ran off while my friend and I were in the back, delayed. He looked at me and said "your hair, your hair!" and I felt a tingling sensation and saw his hair was slightly sticking up (70's). We ran from the canopy and heard a blistering blast as lightning hit a pole next to us. Since we were teens, we thought it was exhilarating. Years later, we thought how dopey we were for delaying to leave the large canopy.


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