Approximately 25-30 meters. Hit the middle of the street while I was watching out of a window from an elevation of about 10m. It was an experience.

Couple years ago, lightning struck a tree on our neighbor’s property across the street. We didn’t see the strike, but we heard it; the tree basically exploded. Some of the branches fell onto the power lines and started an electrical fire, so it was a whole big thing. Bunch of people standing out on their driveways watching the police and fire department trying to deal with it.

It hit close enough to shock my through my all aluminum laptop. Felt like getting kicked in the chest. Somehow both me and the laptop were ok.

My apartment building in NYC was struck about 30 years ago. It blew about 10 bricks out of the parapet wall on the roof and, curiously, the intercom in the entrance played Disney Radio for 3 weeks.

I lived across the street from a power distribution station. One night while I was outside, there was a lightning strike there, and it lit up the sky like daylight for 2-3 full seconds, and the power for the whole town went out.

In school, my PE in the senior years was rowing. You basically gathered a crew with one experienced steering person, put the boat on the river, did the predefined round, put the boat away, and you could go home. Be there early, get you boat out quicker, row a bit faster, and you were done early.

One day, the teacher stopped boats going out shortly after we left because of the weather. We were at the farthest point when we noticed the thunderstorm. I can tell you, in a thunderstorm you don’t want to be the one high point in the middle of the river! So we ran the boat home, pulled it out of the water and carried it up the ramp to the boat house. When we were in the middle of the ramp, lighting struck the flag pole about 5-10m from the ramp. Light and sound effects simultaneously, and it was LOUD!

I don’t remember the moments after the impact, but we were told that no group ever had carried their boat up the ramp and into the building that fast.

Lightning touched down in my neighbor’s yard. My wifi access point and my laptop battery both got cooked, and I may have accidentally tought my kids a new word.

In my teens in the mountains of Colorado there were tons of lightning strikes. One summer, a lightning strike in our driveway took out our garage door openers and a TV.

This past summer, I did a 40+ mi bike ride that covered some very open areas of the CO plains. At my turn-around spot I could tell a storm was moving in quick and thought, “ah well, some sprinkles will feel alright.” Then I rode for about 9 miles in a downpour with lightning crashing around me while on a dirt road with just about nothing else around me (me swearing aloud the whole time). Finally got to some relative safety of some tight rock outcrops with overhangs. I was still outside and not totally safe, but it felt good to get out of that scary situation as much as I could for a bit while the storm passed.

idk how close the closest one has been, because I’m usually inside when it’s storming. everyone in the midwest knows it’s the best time to sleep.

I do know there was one several hundred feet from my house a couple years ago, because it blew a tree apart.

I saw a RED bolt of lightning hit the ground about 30 feet away. It looked as thick and solid as a young tree sapling, and let out a mighty boom that sounded just as solid.

And it was red. Why was it red? I’ve wondered if it was just bright, and made my retina flare.

I swear to god lightning came down a few feet away from us one day when I was hiking with my mom and her friend. For a year or so afterwards I got nervous whenever it looked like it might storm

One night I was lying in bed around midnight, trying to get to sleep when a bolt struck a hundred feet or so down the street from me. It was spring so I had the windows open and it was fucking loud. Took me a while to calm down and start to doze off again, so of course that’s when the fire engines arrived to investigate the scene with their sirens going full blast.

I was on deck when lightning struck the MF/HF antenna. The backdeck was very low compared to most other things, so there was never any danger.

“Hey, Mike, you might wanna report that to the bridge” I asked of my coworker who had the radio.

I was driving through the country on a somewhat stormy day, when I happened to glance over and saw a bolt hit in the middle of a field I was next to. My immediate thought was “Oh, this is going to be LOUD.” A split second later, it was, like feel it in your chest loud. It was a such a weird physical feeling too, like a sudden buzz or tingling all over, I’m not sure how else to describe it. The cat I had with me did not like it at all, she wouldn’t stop crying for a good thirty minutes before she settled back down.

Tree got hit split it in half and destroyed a house. Some bullets can’t penetrate trees fully and lightning cuts it in half. Goes to show you nature is more terrifying than you think.