Weather stories

15 May 2001 at Oxford (Oxfordshire).

Lightning struck a house in Asquith Road, Rose Hill, while a 35-year-old woman was using the telephone to check that her mother-in-law was safe during the storm. The telephone receiver was instantly burnt out and the woman hurled back into a chair. She reported she was ‘knocked out for a couple of seconds … there was a pain like I’ve never had before in my head, like someone had got a sword in my brain and was twisting it … the inside of my left ear was burnt and I now have a hole in the membrane of my ear.’

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.165.