4th July - 16:00 - Milton Keynes, UK
Thunderstorm enters Milton Keynes, Set's up video camera

4th July - 16:40 - Milton Keynes, UK
Large, ear piercing explosion that shakes floor, power goes out

4th July - 18:20 - Milton Keynes, UK
Storm cleared up - power restored 50 minutes later

5th July - 08:15 - Milton Keynes, UK
Upload video from the camera to my PC, as one is very curious about that large bang at around 16:40. I slow the video down in Vegas, to just one FPS, from a 60 FPS reccording, so I can see everything very, very slowley. Here is what I found:







These 3 stills, take up all of about 0.4 secconds of the real time video, but were captured in order. It almost looks like it struck the house immediatly in front (which has a lightning conductor on that corner), then struck in the foreground, just off the camera, then cleanly landed in the parking area in the final shot. When you play the video in rela time, all you see is a very slight flash, but one massive bang immediatly. Pretty freeky stuff, and way to close to my house for comfort.

:shock: Speecless, thats scary!

I might have to do that later on (thunderstorms planned), but Drayton Monkey said his gazebo got struck, wierd wether!

I should have guessed that weather like this would move in. It always does in the UK. We have 3-4 days of 30+ and one day of storms. Then it just stays muggy for a week after the storm, raining every so often.

And, for those who were as fascinated as I was by the lightning caught at such close quarters, i've uploaded a section of the video for everyone:

Storm Video Clip - DivX Video - 12MB

You can see the incident above at around the 37th seccond of this clip, and you may also need to slow the video down in a video editor program to see it as it is above. It happens that quickly!

Lucky you. But I'm glad you guys didn't get hit.

That's pritty freaky.

For some weird reason I can hear it but not see it, avocado you AOL and your stupid ways. Anyway my gazebo was struck whilst I was at school. My Mum told me when I came home and at the moment it's just on the floor in a heap.

Our gazebo didn't survive neither. It never got struck, but strong winds, and my lazy lime attempt to tie it into the ground properly, mean that it ended up 2 gardens down!

You have no idea how silly I felt having to ask the lady who lived in the house that she had something of ours in her garden..