Approximately 25-30 meters. Hit the middle of the street while I was watching out of a window from an elevation of about 10m. It was an experience.

Couple years ago, lightning struck a tree on our neighbor’s property across the street. We didn’t see the strike, but we heard it; the tree basically exploded. Some of the branches fell onto the power lines and started an electrical fire, so it was a whole big thing. Bunch of people standing out on their driveways watching the police and fire department trying to deal with it.

Lightning touched down in my neighbor’s yard. My wifi access point and my laptop battery both got cooked, and I may have accidentally tought my kids a new word.

My apartment building in NYC was struck about 30 years ago. It blew about 10 bricks out of the parapet wall on the roof and, curiously, the intercom in the entrance played Disney Radio for 3 weeks.

It hit close enough to shock my through my all aluminum laptop. Felt like getting kicked in the chest. Somehow both me and the laptop were ok.

In school, my PE in the senior years was rowing. You basically gathered a crew with one experienced steering person, put the boat on the river, did the predefined round, put the boat away, and you could go home. Be there early, get you boat out quicker, row a bit faster, and you were done early.

One day, the teacher stopped boats going out shortly after we left because of the weather. We were at the farthest point when we noticed the thunderstorm. I can tell you, in a thunderstorm you don’t want to be the one high point in the middle of the river! So we ran the boat home, pulled it out of the water and carried it up the ramp to the boat house. When we were in the middle of the ramp, lighting struck the flag pole about 5-10m from the ramp. Light and sound effects simultaneously, and it was LOUD!

I don’t remember the moments after the impact, but we were told that no group ever had carried their boat up the ramp and into the building that fast.

In my teens in the mountains of Colorado there were tons of lightning strikes. One summer, a lightning strike in our driveway took out our garage door openers and a TV.

This past summer, I did a 40+ mi bike ride that covered some very open areas of the CO plains. At my turn-around spot I could tell a storm was moving in quick and thought, “ah well, some sprinkles will feel alright.” Then I rode for about 9 miles in a downpour with lightning crashing around me while on a dirt road with just about nothing else around me (me swearing aloud the whole time). Finally got to some relative safety of some tight rock outcrops with overhangs. I was still outside and not totally safe, but it felt good to get out of that scary situation as much as I could for a bit while the storm passed.

I saw a RED bolt of lightning hit the ground about 30 feet away. It looked as thick and solid as a young tree sapling, and let out a mighty boom that sounded just as solid.

And it was red. Why was it red?

I lived across the street from a power distribution station. One night while I was outside, there was a lightning strike there, and it lit up the sky like daylight for 2-3 full seconds, and the power for the whole town went out.

idk how close the closest one has been, because I’m usually inside when it’s storming. everyone in the midwest knows it’s the best time to sleep.

I do know there was one several hundred feet from my house a couple years ago, because it blew a tree apart.

I wasn’t close, but lightning struck my house when I was a kid. When we got home, most of our appliances and electronics were broken. My Xbox (the original one) was sitting on the garage floor above some rebar embedded in the concrete. The lightning went through the Xbox into the rebar and blew a chunk of concrete and the Xbox across the garage. RIP Xbox.

Insurance paid for most of it after they came out and verified we were indeed struck by lightning.

When I was a kid my house was struck by lightning. It actually struck my bedroom but we were all downstairs watching TV at the time. It was a super loud bang and the power went out, and our dog started yelping like she was dying. We found the dog huddled in the back corner of the yard. She was fine, we think the noise just scared her. The outlet in my bedroom wall where it hit was destroyed, just some charred chunks of plastic and metal that had blown out of the wall and hit the side of my bed. I think we ended up having to replace all the outlets in my room. It knocked off the siding where it hit the outside of my bedroom wall, but i don’t think it even damaged it, we just hung it back up. The fire department came and made sure there were no hotspots, and they were able to trace the path. It hit my room, traveled through the house, and then out to the transformer on the street, which had blown up. Oddly though, I don’t think any of the electronics in the house were damaged, not even the stereo in my room right by where the lightning struck.

Several years ago there was a strike somewhere in our neighborhood, close enough to damage several electronics in my house, mostly via the network. I lost my router, and the built-in ethernet port on my PC.

When I was in high school a friend and I were waiting outside the school when it started raining. Lightning struck the field across the street. I wanted to look around the area to see if I could find some fulgurite (sand that gets fused into glass by lightning) but never got a chance to.

I have several antennas in my backyard (amateur radio) and have to disconnect my radios whenever lightning gets close. I can tell when a storm is in the area through the radio even when the weather around me is clear. I really should get a lightning detector.

On a related note, some government entity in the US (I believe it’s either NOAA or the NWS) keeps a public database of lighting deaths.

When I was a kid, I saw a strange yellowish-orange ball shoot across the yard in front of me. No one would believe me. A couple of years ago, I read the description of ball lightning. I think that must have been it.

Tree got hit split it in half and destroyed a house. Some bullets can’t penetrate trees fully and lightning cuts it in half. Goes to show you nature is more terrifying than you think.