Weather stories

7 July 2001 at Hook Norton (Oxfordshire).

During the evening of a local folk festival, lightning struck a 41-year-old Special Constable via a metal tent pole. The bolt passed ‘from the pole into his hand and out through his feet’. His digital watch was destroyed but he was able to complete his shift. He recalled that ‘when I was hit I felt like a giant mobile phone on vibrate … my arms went up into the air and I was jolted back about two or three feet.’

Derek Elsom and Jonathan Webb, ‘Lightning Strikes to People in the British Isles, Summary 2001’, The Journal of Meteorology, vol.27, no.269, May/June 2002, p.167.