The owner says it happened around 5:30 a.m. and sent debris flying a hundred feet in every direction
CLARK COUNTY — Mother Nature put on quite a show Thursday morning as a rare late Summer thunderstorm rolled through Southwest Washington and the Portland Metro area.
Kristeen Millett says a loud clap of thunder shook her out of bed at her home near La Center about 5:30 a.m.. Her power had been knocked out and she noticed a strong odor of something like pine.
“I knew something had been struck,” Millett told ClarkCountyToday.com.
She ran outside and saw what remained of a large Douglas Fir on fire in her field.
“The fire department came and put it out,” says Millett. “The debris field goes about a hundred feet in all directions.”
Amazingly, Millett says none of their horses, chickens, goats, or dogs was near the tree when the lightning struck. The force of the electricity flipped all the circuit breakers in her house, shutting down the electricity.
“I can’t imagine the force of the electricity that went through the ground,” she says. “It was pretty crazy this morning.”
The National Weather Service in Portland says their equipment measured between 250 and 350 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in the area as of 6 a.m.
There were several other reports of lightning hitting trees, and Clark Public Utilities reported several hundred outages during the morning, but there have been no reports of any injuries or major fires as a result of this morning’s storm.
