Watch House Get Struck By Lightning, Burn Down

A home burns in Spring, Texas shortly after a 
lightning strike. Not all lightning strikes cause fires
like this but once they get going, the
blazes can move pretty fast.

 It's amazing how quickly a lightning strike can can cause chaos.

 Thunderstorms rumbled through the Houston area last Friday, typical weather in that humid part of the nation. 

But lightning is always dangerous and often destructive, and we have a classic case here. Doorbell cameras caught lightning hitting a house. Within minutes, almost the entire roof was in flames.

It looks like a somewhat newer house, and this type modern wood frame homes seem to burn down awfully fast once they catch.  

Watch the videos: 

The first video shows a house being struck by lightning in Spring, Texas, a suburb north of Houston. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Moments have the strike, the house looked like what you see in the next video. The house is essentially a total loss, even though neighbors called the fire department immediately after the strike and those firefighters got there quickly. 

The roof and attic are gone, and I'm sure the rest of the house is trashed by heat, fire, smoke and water. 

Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

I had a little trouble finding reliable statistics on house fires caused by lightning. One source, lightningrods.com, could well have an agenda, but here's what they said 

They claim that one in 200 homes are hit by lightning annually, though many of those don't cause fires. Lightningrods,com also say that between 2014-2018 U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated 22,600 fires started by lightning. 

That statistic didn't break down what percentage were in homes, businesses, other buildings and no buildings at all. It looks like that was the most recent data available, too.

Up here in Vermont, we don't have nearly as many thunderstorms as, say, Florida and Texas, so we're somewhat safer from these house fires. Unfortunately, though, you never know, 

On the bright side, no lightning storms are in the forecast until at least Saturday, and thunderstorm season up here will soon draw to a close,