A chimney stack has been destroyed, tiles damaged and a window completely blown out by a lightning strike on a home in the rural village of Brighstone.
Firefighters from numerous Isle of Wight stations have rushed to the West Wight this lunchtime (Monday) as a result of the strike – which sent out a massive rumble across the Island – at around 12:40.
A detached residential property on Galley Lane has been hit by a bolt of lightning, which has caused significant damage to the roof.
A total of 3 pumping appliances and a fire officer are currently in attendance.
A spokesperson for Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service has said:
Crews from Newport, Shanklin and Freshwater were called at around 12:45pm on 27 January to attend two properties in Galley Lane Brighstone, that had been affected by a lightning strike.
“On arrival crews carried out a thorough investigation inside and out of the properties and thankfully there was no sign of fire”.
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Jamie Russell, Chief Forecaster of IW Met Service, has spoken about today’s incident:
“When lightning hits a house, it often just causes very minor damage if any at all, but on this occasion, it was something we call ‘positive’ lightning, which is a type of lightning that originates in the positively charged upper portions of the cloud.
“The reason it can be so destructive to anything it touches is due to how much more powerful positive lightning can be.
“A typical negative strike (the most common type) can vary in voltage but usually is between 80 million and 300 million volts. Positive lightning however can strike at closer to 1 billion volts as it needs that extra charge to jump from the top of the cloud to the ground, a cloud height that is often around 20,000ft in the UK during winter and sometimes up to 40-45,000ft in summer.
“So this is why so much damage was caused, not so much from the charge itself but from the shockwave that such a high voltage strike can produce, which in turn sounds like an explosion rather than a normal ‘crack’ of thunder”.
Very sad news, the weather is atrocious at
present.