It was late on a Sunday night - sometime after midnight, and I was home in Jersey for 4th of July weekend.  I was sitting at the computer writing an e-mail before going to bed.  There was what seemed to be a pretty weak thunderstorm passing through the area.  There hadn't been any thunder for about 10 minutes, so I was just trucking away on my e-mail when all of a sudden there was a HUGE flash of lightning outside the study window.  Virtually simultaneously, there was the loudest crash of thunder I'd ever heard.  I was kind of in a daze... I walked into my parents room and asked if they'd heard the thunder.  They said they had... I kinda of sat down on the floor in their room.

They asked if I was OK... I said "I dunno" b/c I really wasn't sure.  I couldn't feel my hands much, but they were shaking like crazy.  I'm not sure if it was a shock coming through the computer, or just that the lightning had hit so close, but my hands didn't stop shaking for another five minutes, and when I went to bed over an hour ago, they were still tingling.

In the meantime, we looked out the window... there was a piece of siding on the room of the house across the street, and it looked like it had just been stripped off.  The police and fire dept arrived, so I'm guessing it set off the house alarm, and then when the cops got there they realized that the house had been struck by lightning.  When I woke up the next morning, I took the first picture below from the study.  The house across the street is about 30 yards away.   I then walked outside and saw that on the other side of the house, there was the damage you can see in the second picture.  Yikes!