Yesterday, I visited my sister to celebrate her latest cancer-free checkup and her birthday. Feeling bad due to a miserable Summer cold, I left early. When I got home, a small patch of woods in my back yard was on fire.
[I
Crom!

The girls and I fought the fire, first with buckets of water, then were able to get enough hoses linked to hose it down.

A lightning strike had blown pieces of wood all over my back yard.

Had the fire continued to spread it surely would have consumed my neighbor's workshop and maybe our houses.

any idea what started it?

Man, lucky you came home in time!
This is the problem with trying to be prepared for everything; literally anything can happen!
Only bright side is you have a good story, now.

Lucky you were there to get it put out and no one was hurt. Lightening causes many fires out here in the desert. Scarry stuff.

The strange thing is, my neighbor was out working in his yard yesterday, and said there was no lightning. He thought I was burning out back and paid no attention to the smoke. Later, I showed him the lightning stuck tree. We were both puzzled. The only logical explanation is that the strike must have occured days earlier when we had some thunderstorms and had just smoldered underground for some time before catching the trees and brush on fire. I had to put a lot of water at the base of the tree as smoke continued to rise out of the ground around the tree. Strange, indeed. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />
Cleaned up the mess today with a little help from Dog Father on the limbs.

wow. i just got over a summer cold so i know how you feel.good thing you took off early.

thread title is a good movie too

At least there was no harm to any houses.

Now I am thinking that Odin himself zapped the area OR you may have a gate leading to hell about to open up. Watch out as the zombie army may begin to rise in your area.

A.K.A I am glad that no one was hurt!

I felt bad leaving early as the company was good (all but me). All I wanted to do was go to bed. NOT! Had I remained another hour or so, who knows what a catastrophy we would have returned to. Mosquito bit and exhausted, I drank an IPA and called it a day after we doused the fire.

Why do you think I took Dog Father with me? Odin would never do that to me, but Loki might. Zombies tremble at the sound of me unsheathing Dog Father!

Vic, glad everything turned out alright. I've heard of things like that happening but never known anyone it actually happened to. Kinda makes me want to rethink my preparedness for that sore of thing. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />

Good thing I just replaced my pump. It failed about two weeks ago. Think I'll buy a few extra hoses! Good thing I left my sister's house early.

WoW! good instincts bro, something like that can have very bad results, your guardian angel should get something special, say a new knife! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

When I find "lightning wood" I save it and make things outta it. To me it's special..