Storms
A storm that rolled through North Idaho Monday night sank a sailboat, blew a hole in a concrete wall and knocked out power to thousands of homes.
Climatologist Cliff Harris said he counted more than 100 hundred lightning strikes during the storm, which lasted two and half hours.
"It was one of the top five thunderstorms since 1990 because of its duration," Harris said. "It was like a war zone."
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| ©Timothy Eberly
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| Multiple bolts of lightning strike the mountains surrounding Coeur d'Alene on Monday night.
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Don't look for any religious symbolism here - it was only a freak act of Mother Nature, says Sister Ilaria.
The nuns at Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden were thanking God on Sunday that no one was hurt when a bolt of lightning shot out of the sky and struck their 33-foot statue of Jesus.
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| ©Post / Brian Brainerd
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| The statue, damaged Saturday, was sent from Italy in sections in 1954. No one was hurt by the falling pieces.
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The lightning bolt broke off one of Jesus' arms and a hand and damaged one of his feet, sending marble plummeting to the ground during a Saturday afternoon storm.
Diyarbakir, Turkey - Heavy storms, landslides, flash floods and lightning have killed at least 23 people in Europe and Turkey, officials said on Monday.
Nine people died in eastern Turkey, including six killed in severe flooding in mountainous Agri province near the Iranian border, where river waters were swollen by melting snows. Two more people were missing.
XinhuaThu, 24 May 2007 03:50 UTC
A lightning strike killed seven students and injured 30 others in a village school on Wednesday afternoon in southwest China, said local authorities.
The lightning struck the school while children were attending class at around 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, in a primary school in Xingye Village, Kaixian County of Chongqing Municipality, said officials.
Like a molten thread of white heat, lightning cuts across the grey skies above midtown Manhattan to find the top of the Empire State Building.
The storm yesterday afternoon was part of the latest blast of bad weather to hit New York.
The murky skies and lightning, seen from across the East River in this dramatic picture, were accompaniedby 72mph winds and a deluge which saw an inch of rain fall in nearby Central Park.
A Cyprus Airways (CY) flight to Athens was forced to abort and return to Larnaca airport yesterday morning after its right engine was struck by lightning.
The Airbus A319, carrying 118 passengers and seven crew, took off from Larnaca at 9.30am and was struck by lightening over Paphos. As a precaution, the captain decided to turn the plane around and head back to Larnaca.
Flames and smoke poured into the sky Saturday over an oil refinery where lightning set off a fire and an explosion that was felt miles away, authorities said.
No injuries were reported and there were no immediate evacuation orders in the south-central Oklahoma town, said Mike Hancock, a spokesman for Wynnewood Refinery Co.
Flames and smoke boiled hundreds of feet into the air from two 80,000-gallon tanks in the Wynnewood Refinery complex, officials said.
Firefighters doused the area surrounding the tanks Saturday, Hancock said.
"Tank fires are pretty pesky fires. They're easy to keep contained, but they're hard to fight," Hancock said. "It's hard to estimate how long it will be. It can take a day or so to burn the product."
HANOI - Flooding, landslides and lightning have killed 15 people and left one missing since Friday night in Vietnam, bringing the country's toll in a week of torrential rain to 42, reports said on Sunday.
Thousands have been evacuated to higher ground as water levels in the northern region's main rivers were expected to continue rising with more rainfall forecast for the coming week, state media quoted a government report as saying.
Providence, Rhode Island - Fire engulfed a dock area at the Port of Providence on Tuesday night when lightning struck as a tanker was unloading gasoline, sending large plumes of smoke and fireballs into the air.
Officials said the ship was able to safely pull away from the dock.
A 16-year-old girl has survived a direct lightning strike. The gold cross pendant on a chain melted and evaporated from the girl's neck.
Marina Motygina from Ekaterinburg in Russia's Urals went bathing with her friend Anya. She had just got out of water when a thunderstorm broke out, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reports.
