A brilliant flash of white, thunderous crack, and a shattered tree. It's the closest one Steinbach woman ever wants to get to lightning.
On Monday night, Laurel Plett on Bush Farm Road and owner of Dogs on the Run, a local dog daycare, found herself in the heart of a summer storm. That's not exactly where she wanted to be.
"I am actually seriously afraid of lightning," she says.
When the rain began pouring, Plett says she darted outside to close a door. Five minutes later, back at her desk with 15 snoozing pups, nature delivered quite the show.
"There is a flash of lightning that makes the evening sky completely white, and a 'boom!' at the same time. I literally almost fell off my chair. I just jumped. All 15 dogs jumped and started freaking out," she says.
Once everyone calmed down, she figured the action happened in the bush nearby, or the field next to her.
But later, while checking on some trees in her yard—grateful for the free watering—Plett realized it was much closer.
"I noticed something weird in the corner of my eye. I looked and I walked over and there's this tree stripped. It was hilarious. They're all dark trunked trees, and here's this white one," she describes.
Turns out, the lightning had hit one of her trees, peeling a large strip of bark clean off and hurling chunks of it 30 to 40 feet away.
A long scar now splits the trunk, and she says the earth around it is stirred up.
"I didn't want to get too close. I took some pictures... (it was) a little scary to me," Plett says.
While she suspects the tree is a casualty, she is grateful no one was injured.
"We're all OK. It took the dogs a while to settle, though, because every time the hydro went out, they jumped because what was it? Another one? But they're all fine," she says.
Written with files from Corny Rempel
