please read, really strange...

[Ky Trophy Fish]

You are a lucky man.Go buy a lottery ticket.Rod humming was static electricity buildup precluding the lightning strike.Have seen line leviate above water and hair stand straight out from static electricity during thunder strorms.Been bit once at Lone Valley ramp on Green tieing boat down when lightning hit across parking lot.Several of us at ramp got a shock like hitting electric fence.On Cumberland River was hunkered down under a bluff during storm and lightning hit tree above us on top of bluff,felt heat from strike and nearly went deaf for a little while.Before strike,hair was standing out and air actually felt tingley . Makes you have some respect for Mother Nature!

[waterdog101]

this guy I know, told me his neighbors were having a yard sale, and a storm was brewing off in the distance, so they started moving their yard sale stuff inside. his little sister was the last one in line, to cary something inside. when they came back out for to take something else inside. his little sister had been hit with lighting, and was dead. he said the lighting they had been seeing was a good 10 miles or more away.

[RoadToad]

It's scary how far out in front of a storm you can see lightning strikes sometimes. I was at a horse farm in Chesapeake City, MD once, on a beautiful, sunny day, when I heard the loudest BANG I've ever heard in my life. It was so loud my first thought was it was a stray shell from Aberdeen Proving Grounds. They're about 15 miles away, and you'd occasionally hear distant booms from there. Scared the hell out of everybody, including the horses. The owner of the farm was outside at the time, and she heard a buzzing sound traveling around their electric fence just before it hit. Turns out a transformer a couple hundred yards away had been hit by lightning, apparently a ground-to-air strike. Within about a half hour it went from sunny skies to a thunderstorm with heavy rains, hail, and lots of lightning, but I know that storm had to be at least 10 miles away when that strike happened.

[Dave Stewart]

If you can hear the thunder...it can get you...you are lucky, this time.

[jlawson435]

I fish a lot in St pete FL When you fish on the Sunshine Skyway Pier as soon as you see lightning you stop fishing an get in your car. I have seen lightning look 10 miles away and then you will hear a huming noise running down the pier metal railing. There have been several people killed there from holding their rods and the rail even when it looks like the lightning is way off.

[natebosox]

if you look in last months field and stream magazine they had an article about ligthing striking a graphite rod. it blew him out of the water. you got lucky.