The night was just like any other for Julia and Harry Orpwood, then \u201call hell broke loose\u201d.<\/p>\n
Last week their house was struck by lightning, leaving a large hole in a window.<\/p>\n
The strike was one of 19 across Christchurch and Selwyn last Sunday, accompanied by heavy rain.<\/p>\n
Julia was in the lounge scrolling on Facebook while Harry was in the bathroom getting ready for bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just sitting there, then all hell broke loose outside. The flash was huge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Said Harry: \u201cIt was like someone dropped a bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first, Julia thought something electrical had gone wrong with the house on Tancreds Rd, Lincoln.<\/p>\n
But with the power still on, she realised it was lightning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my husband was more frightened than me; I just didn\u2019t know what the hell was going on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Harry said it was \u201cpretty frightening\u201d, comparing it to the current conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith what\u2019s going around the world at the moment, I thought holy s**t have they sent one over here? Because it was that loud \u2013 it was unbelievable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The strike also spooked the family\u2019s pets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cat was outside, she came running in. The rottweiler wanted to go outside, the jack russell was just shaking,\u201d Julia said.<\/p>\n
Their second cat stayed asleep.<\/p>\n
Julia sent a message to her family group chat, saying their house had been struck.<\/p>\n
It was only when her daughter-in-law Tanya called to check if they were okay that they noticed the large hole in the window a couple of metres from where Julia had been sitting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just that much racket we didn\u2019t hear it break, and the curtain stopped the glass,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Metservice meteorologist Lewis Ferris said several of the 19 strikes were cloud-to-ground, which are often louder than cloud-to-cloud strikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The night was just like any other for Julia and Harry Orpwood, then \u201call hell broke loose\u201d. Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-320573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}