INTERLACHEN, Fla. – A woman was just seconds away from possibly being struck by a lightning bolt that came close to hitting her Interlachen home Friday, the woman’s daughter-in-law told News4JAX.
Missy White said the family is still unsettled after the experience. She said her mother-in-law was grabbing her mail and had just closed the garage when the lightning struck.
White said if her mother-in-law was outside a few seconds before, she could have possibly been hit. Video footage from a neighbor’s door camera captured the moments the lightning struck down.
“It literally just came down. In the video, you could see the dirt started flying up like it was exploding,” White said.
White was sitting in the living room when she saw a lightning bolt in the back of her home, which is across the street from her mother-in-law’s.
“We heard a really loud boom, and it shook our whole house. And it sounded kind of like two booms, back to back. And so when that happened, we didn’t think much of it other than we just knew that there had been a lightning strike,” White said.
A short time later, White heard her mother-in-law’s generator turn on and found out that the home lost power and a few appliances were ruined.
“So we kind of thought that maybe the lightning struck her home or near her home, and she went outside later that afternoon and found a trench dug in next to the flagpole. So we assumed that it had hit the flagpole,” White said.
That’s when White watched the videos and discovered how close the lightning came to her home.
“We were wondering if anybody had gotten hurt or if there was any kind of damage to the transformers and that sort of thing. So, we kind of got up and went to the door and were just concerned if our mother-in-law was OK,” White said.
No one was hurt and the fire that was sparked by the strike put out itself.
White said this situation was an eye-opener and recommends that people are aware that it might not be safe to go outside during a storm.