![]() ![]() The moment it hits, it turns the tree’s water into gas, causing the plant’s outer layers to explode outwards. When lightning blasts a tree, the impact can be felt instantaneously. What Happens When A Tree Is Struck By Lightning? There have even been recorded instances of trees getting blasted by lightning in sunny weather! And with more than 100 lightning strikes happening around the world every second, there’s a fairly good chance that your tree might get hit one of these days.ĭuring spring and summer seasons, lightning strikes become more prevalent, and while not all trees attract lightning (short ones come to mind), it is critical that you learn how to assess lightning damage just in case your plant does get hit. Moreover, it has long been proven that taking shelter under a tall tree in a thunderstorm is one of the most ill-advised things to do.īeing usually the tallest object around a given area makes a tree a natural lightning rod during tempestuous weather. As a matter of fact, every year, thousands of trees get struck by lightning. The viral photo is what happens when you make an interesting castle out of sand, not when lightning hits it.Lightning can undoubtedly be considered as one of the greatest threats to massive trees. As fellow Scientific American blogger Glendon Mellow has uncovered, the original photo appears to come from an artist who specializes in making sandcastles. UPDATE : The viral photo is now confirmed to have nothing to do with lightning. When lightning strikes sand, it can create something beautiful, but not this viral photo. Every time we get it wrong, it's a missed opportunity for education. This is a sunset on Mars ! This is what happens when a parasitic fungus replaces all the tissue of a tarantula ! But nature’s ability to astound has us jumping at every weirdness no matter its scientific validity. Nature provides us with truly amazing images. On Reddit, where the picture was first picked up, the first commenter nails it :Īs someone who lives near the beach, this is a stick stuck in the sand had wet drippy sand slowly dripped/poured on it.Ĭurrently circling the internet is a piece of positioned driftwood with some sloppy sand castles on it. Nothing about the photo is consistent with the already understood phenomenon. But the most likely scenario is that this isn’t what happens when lightning strikes sand at all. That’s the best-case scenario: An amazing piece of petrified lightning with wet sand dripped on it by playful beachgoers. The spires on the top of it were put there afterwards.Įven if it were fulgurite underneath, the extra weight would surely topple or break it. Third, looking again at all the other examples of fulgurite specimens (that it looks nothing like), the object in the viral photo has obviously been tampered with. It would never make it to that size without having a team of geologists quickly excavate it in front of tanning swimmers for the shot. He viral photo is on the edge of a beach with foot traffic and a tide. ![]() Second, when petrified lightning is exposed by erosion, it is in a relatively calm area (they are fragile after all). First, the photo supposedly shows a specimen of fulgurite that looks nothing like any of the other myriad, cataloged examples that you can easy find on Google. This brings us all the way back to the viral photo. But even though the constant push of erosion can exposure these underground wonders, they are still fragile, requiring careful excavation to unearth a whole specimen without breaking it. ![]() Just a few months ago, chemists used gas trapped in fulgurite bubbles to determine the flora of ancient deserts. ![]() Fulgurite is always a rare find, so specimens like the photo above (and these less believable ones ) are awesome opportunities to glimpse nature’s raw power. ![]()
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