Caught on camera: Lightning strike hits storm-chasing photographer’s car and disables it
May 13, 2022
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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With the advancements in tech, the proliferation of relatively inexpensive camera equipment and the ever pervasive advancement of social media and YouTube over the last decade or so, storm-chasing has become a big thing. Once a task only pursued by scientists and the absolutely insane, it’s now become pretty normal. For a storm chaster who goes by the name Pi (and More Pi on YouTube), though, this trip was anything but normal.
While looking for tornadoes in Iowa, his car (which he was inside) was struck by lightning and completely disabled. It also fried one of his in-car cameras. Fortunately for us, he had his own cameras recording and the whole event was also captured on camera from the vantage point of his friend, High Risk Chris, in a separate car.
Pi wasn’t quite sure at first what was happening after you hear the loud bang of the lightning in the video up top. But you can see that the event instantly and visibly shook him. When his car then wouldn’t start, he quickly guessed the lightning might have struck the vehicle directly and disabled it. Later viewing from the camera in his friend’s vehicle confirmed that lightning did indeed strike the antenna on top of his car, frying some of the vehicle’s electronics as well as one of his action cameras.
Although the incident happened a month ago, Pi’s Prius is still not running and is awaiting repair. According to a recent update on the video’s description, the dealer had to replace the Engine Control Module (ECM) in order to be able to even diagnose what else might be wrong with the vehicle. Once that was installed and with the repair bill already at $1,000, they found three Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that needed to be replaced (which would be another $2,500).
Pi plans to tow the vehicle home to Colorado and replace them himself to save a little money on the repair. But that might not be the end of things. He suspects the vehicle will need further diagnosing once those are replaced to identify other components that may also need to be replaced.
To follow Pi’s adventures, you can find More Pi on YouTube and Even More Pi on Facebook.
[via PetaPixel]
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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3 responses to “Caught on camera: Lightning strike hits storm-chasing photographer’s car and disables it”
If your car is going to be hit by lightning, make sure it’s a DeLorean.
Haha, brilliant! I totally forgot about that. I shoulda made a BTTF joke.
Many years ago (20+) my car got hit by lightning, driving late one night down the motorway when I saw a flash followed by a bang. Car rolled to a stop and I wonder what the hell just happened, had to get the car towed. The car was back on the road after a few weeks because it was so old not much could go wrong (can’t remember what was repaired). However when we saw the roof next morning there was a spiderweb of lines and scorch mark that nearly burnt it’s way through the roof.