Lightning Strikes Highway, Sends Chunk of Road Through Ford F-150’s Windshield
In through the windshield and out through the rear glass.
The odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime are, apparently, one in 15,300. That stat sounds incredibly specific but it came from weather.gov, and if the government says it, then it's got to be true. Anyhow, I went searching on that same site to see the odds of your Ford F-150 being trashed by a piece of road that was struck by lightning, and I came up empty-handed. Looks like this wrecked pickup in Florida is a real rarity, then.
A viral Facebook post initially shared by Walton County Fire Rescue shows a Ford that looks like it went through a tornado. Its windshield has an enormous hole smack-dab in the center and as you can see from the other photos, the object passed all the way through the back glass as well. According to the fire rescue squad, said object was a chunk of road that was sent airborne after lightning struck directly in front of the truck. It then hit the debris at highway speeds, resulting in the carnage you see here. And no, the same thing probably didn't happen to your buddy's uncle once.
The super-strange incident took place on Florida's Interstate 10, roughly 40 miles north of Destin, around 7:30 a.m. local time on Monday. Both of the vehicle's occupants were taken to the hospital with injuries, which isn't surprising; if anything, it'd be a shock had they come out unscathed. It's unclear what condition they're currently in, though a public information officer with Walton County Fire Rescue told CNN their injuries weren't major or life-threatening.
No photos of the road damage were posted; however, WCFR says a dinner-plate-sized portion of the interstate's top layer was what flew straight through the F-150. Imagine the impact required, then, to make a hole in the windshield that's closer to the size of a beach ball.
After all my years on the internet, this has to be a new one—maybe even for Farmers, too.
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