the odds are even slimmer of capturing it on camera. but head to florida, the lightning capital of the united states, and that chance encounter becomes much more likely. october 5th, 2012. avid storm fans and naples, florida, residents rita and nick, are preparing to watch an afternoon soaker. i looked out the windows and it was so dark and he said, let s go check it out. so we came out on to the lanai and it was, it was really and it was, it was really windy. i thought, this is a neat storm, i have to grab my camera, let me see if i can film this. real rooting tooting rainfall here. very awesome. the skies were angry that day. we were watching this storm build and build and build. rita was filming it and panning her camera back and forth. just really taking the whole thing in. just beautiful. a little lightning. woo-hoo.
a lightning strike, you know? rita s audience expands quickly beyond just her friends. the video goes viral garnering more than 3 million hits. despite all the attention, she and her husband won t try to repeat their up close and personal encounter with a lightning strike. i have never seen a lightning strike this close to me. this experience has it has changed the way i view these things. i m not quite as brave as i used to be. i love it. rita, she s probably going to continue recording all these things, but maybe stand a little further inside the house when she does. oh [ muted ] go. get on out. when nature strikes, it strikes fast. in this 2013 youtube video, a west point cadet is seen releasing a mouse that has taken up residence in his room. all right, buddy. time to go. get on out of here. the cadet has gotten so used to having the pesky critter around, he affectionately calls it whiskers.
rita and nick don t realize how close the lightning strike was to where they were just standing. they wait until the storm ends and then head out beyond their backyard in search of the site of impact. and we couldn t find anything that had burned or charred. we went back into the office and i looked over that film and i found the exact angle that she was standing at and pointed right to this beautiful tabby tree. my husband said, oh my gosh, it was way closer than we thad imagined, and he said look how obvious this is. it s right here. so we walked out there and lo and behold, there it was. the bark was completely stripped off the front side of the beautiful little tabby. it was scattered in a halo all around the tree. pretty amazing. it looks like about a, maybe a four to six-foot section of that tree that just, you know, sliced down. and basically it killed the tree and it took a long time to die off. i thought it was going to make it. unfortunately, it didn t. the tree
i love it. we could see that the storm that was building was stronger than what we frequently see around here. the rainfall was really good. winds are whipping and sheets of rain are pelting the enclosure. rita tries to record all the action. i was panning across the backyard. as i was doing that, i could see in the background the trees were just really bending over from the wind. and i thought, okay, i m going to pan back over there so that i can maybe catch this tree, you know, really bending. watch this tree. it will start getting real windy in just a second. rita doesn t know just how spot-on her camerawork is about to be. oh an explosion of thunder and lightning sends rita scrambling for cover. it s, like, boom.
this tree had some ornamental lighting focused up in the tree. and the lightning had apparently skittered down the side of the tree and struck that fixture. it blew the fixture four or five feet away from where it was originally installed. it just went sailing and landed in the grass. i had to search around to find it. it completely crisped all of the wiring. not wanting to keep this once in a lifetime sight to themselves, rita decides to share her video online. i thought it would be a really great way for all of my friends to see just what a coincidence it was that it just happened to blow up right behind that spot. i thought oh, my gosh, i have to put this on youtube. what are the chances of catching a lightning strike. rita s audience expands quickly beyond her friends. the video goes viral garnering more than 3 million hits.