Bermuda Blog

Today, I was at home when a sudden thunderstorm arrived. Heavy rains and flashes of lightning included. This is Bermuda, and the weather can change from sun to storm very quickly, not uncommon.

Then I heard a ear-shattering "BOOOM!!" and I yelled out loud. It was so close that I thought that the lighning may have hot the house. I immediately turned to face the window, and I saw something fall from roof, though I could not see what it was. It seemed like the did get hit by lightning, though I could see no damage from the inside. A split second after the strike, the power went out.

After 10 minutes, the storm had passed and the weather was calm. I went outside to see what had fallen from the roof. Our front door is on the opposite side of the house from where I saw the object fall, so I was going to walk all the way around the house. But when I opened the front door, this is what I saw:

A large wooden beam was a few feet from out door. My first instinct was to look up towards the top of our roof, but nothing was there. Since our roof is painted white like every other Bermuda house, I didn't expect to see any broken wooden structure up there. Then I turned and look up at our neighbour's house, and realized where the beam came from:

The lightning had struck our neighbour's balcony, and the beam on the left side was thrown about 40 feet from the blast, landing a few feet from out door. Looking around, the driveway was littered with debris, parts of wood and tile and concrete. More amazing was that our Scooter was parked directly below the balcony, yet it was not hit by any debris from the explosion. It only had a few pieces of shredded palm leaf, from the tree next to the balcony. The blast must have been extremely powerful - not only did it throw a heavy beam 40 feet away, but at least one piece of debris was thrown over the roof of our house, the piece that I saw falling after the lightning had struck.

Here are some more photos: