nobody's ever been in a lighting storm and felt the static electricity in the air?
No less than 3 times, I'm somewhat of a lightning magnet. The neatest was back in high school days when a buddy and I were shore fishing one morning during a nasty lightning storm . Slip weights on bottom with some slack in mono line. Every time there was a bolt of lightning the static caused the slack in the lines to raise and fall. We were sitting in my vehicle watching and laughing. I couldn't belive how much the lines would move.
I think the closest was early one morning when it was just getting light and wife and I were still in bed. Right outside bedroom window was power pole and meter , Lightning struck the pole and scared the crap out of us very loud and bright . I forget if power went off or not but when I got up and looked around it had split the power pole and there was splinters laying around and the biggest chunk of wood was about 75 feet away .
In the oilfield we saw lots of strikes at night . Once running the rig during a big storm and it struck the radio antenna up at the crows nest and part of the antenna fell and missed me by about 3 feet. It was big and would have put the hurt to me big times.
The brightest ever was at night when an electric grid substation 3 or 4 miles away got struck , Brightest blue light I have ever seen. It danced around for quite a while around the fence and between the transformers then everything went dark and all the yard lights for as far as we could see in all directions went out.
Also a big oil tank a mile or 2 away got struck one night . huge ball of fire , fire fighters let it burn itself out.
My cousin in law told about his neighbor who got struck while driving a tractor , I guess when they went to pick him up and load in ambulance the body was like mush like there wasn't a skeleton in there.