Eye on the Street
Decatur Metro | July 6, 2011 | 11:22 am
Hilldale Drive, Decatur GA (pic submitted by Lew)
Hilldale Drive, Decatur GA (pic submitted by Lew)
Mr. Boh
nelliebelle1197
FM Fats
Decatur Metro
Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre
chris
Chris Billingsley
anniefannie
AMB
LAM
Steve
Steve
Macarolina
J_T
Limb fell off and a strip of bark peeled off with it? Lightning strike?
Sure looks like lightening strike. I fear that tree will soon die.
Oh just leave it be and see what happens. Gravity can be cruel.
The inside of the tree is likely destroyed and it will die. Saw them today already taking down a large tree behind City Hall that had similar damage.
Yeah. Gravity sucks
Yeah, but gravity isn’t just cruel to the tree, but also to the house, car, deck, and/or people that the tree lands on!
It was lightning, last night around 7PM. There was only minor damage to the car below and the house was untouched. Tree has a huge scar and great story to tell the other trees. My very quick, very amateur album is here http://people.math.gatech.edu/~llefton/tree-vs-lightning I recommend a walk by there in the daylight. Very impressive. Feel some of the smooth bark fragments.
You might want to consult an arborist. Usually when a tree takes a hit like that it is indeed toast. The lightning “explodes” the tree from inside,following the lightning path all the way to the roots where the bolt grounded itself to the earth. Tree is not likely to recover and you would hate for it to fall on someone over the winter
.
Anne
Lightning does not always kill a tree. I have heard of 150 year old trees with evidence of lightning damage at 70 years. Here’s a quote copied from a woodworker’s site:
“The electrical discharge of lightning, like any electric current, is looking for the path of least resistance. Since the sap just under the bark will conduct better than air, trees seem to make good targets.
Each little strand of the multiple flashes is about the size of a pencil, but the flickering that we perceive is actually because these pulses are only a few thousandths of a second, and they dance around a little, which makes it look like it may be as big around as a foot or even more than a yard across.
The temperature is around 30,000* C or six times as hot as the surface of the Sun. When this discharge travels down the side of a tree, the sap instantly turns to steam, which usually blows a strip of bark off of the outside of the tree. A good healthy tree can recover from these scars in a year or two. Some may die from insects and pathogens attacking the injury as an after-effect. But I don’t think it kills a tree by destroying the cells. ”
That tree is tulip poplar. I have heard that lightning struck poplar will change colors around the strike area after a while and is therefore highly sought after by wood turners, especially if it has a large diameter. So don’t cut it up for fire wood. Maybe the guys at Highland Hardware can tell you more.