When Lightning Completely Annihilated a Missouri Highway Truck

Kaboom. If you were close enough to a Missouri highway vehicle, that would have been the deafening sound when lightning completely unloaded 200 million volts in a microsecond.

If you look at the Weather Bug lightning map, you'll see that Missouri is one of the states struck by lightning the most. That fact was emphasized one night when a Greene County Highway Department truck was on the receiving end of a massive lightning strike.

This was one of the more than 9,000,000 lightning strikes in Missouri last year.

This was the moment when the lightning put the jolt into the Missouri highway vehicle in April of 2023.

This is why the National Weather Service says "when thunder roars, go indoors". Even if a storm is miles away, if you are close enough to hear the rumble, you're close enough to be struck by a lighting strike. Considering how many millions of times Missouri is struck every year, best to not take a chance lest you end up like the highway vehicle which was not so fortunate.