Huh? Yes, she said, if dry lightning strikes a tree with thick bark, like a redwood, it will run down the moist layer inside of the bark, and the steam will blow all the bark off. Or the tree may just explode.
Well, you see lightning damaged trees all the time in Yosemite. Here are a couple from a hike I took a couple weeks ago on the Smoky Jack Ridge, across the road from the abandoned Smoky Jack campground (T6 on the Tioga Road) near White Wolf. The ridge is not nearly as high as the nearby El Capitan Ridge, but it is completely exposed to weather coming from the west and south. The first thing that you see when you get up on the ridge is this big old ponderosa pine, which is not nearly as tall as it should be. The top has been blown away more than once.
And if you look at at a neighboring dead tree, you see the same thing.
Spiral lightning scars are very common. But exploding trees? If you look on the web, there are some reports, like this one:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-16772726
So I have two questions. First, have any of you seen this sort of thing? Just how rare is it? Second, all of my own photos show pines with a right-handed spiral and oaks with a left-handed one. Is this species specific?
