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By Rachael O'Connor
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A woman who tried to show her daughter that thunderstorms were nothing to worry about accidentally captured the moment her house was struck by lightning.
Emma Lewis, 41, told Newsweek she has "always loved storms," and when one descended in her area on May 27 after "a gorgeous spell of warm weather," she was teaching her daughter to love them too.
"[I] had actually been telling my daughter that morning how, as a child, I once wanted to be a storm chaser," she said.
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"I was reminiscing about fond childhood memories of sitting under my parents' porch with friends, watching storms roll in and counting the seconds between a flash of lightning and the clap of thunder to work out how far away it was," Lewis, who lives in Pembrokeshire in Wales, told Newsweek. "Those are some very happy memories for me."
"My daughter, however, is much less enthusiastic about thunderstorms," she said.
"She finds thunder and lightning quite frightening and often worries about the possibility of being struck by lightning. So when the storm was approaching, I was trying to reassure her and make it a little more fun rather than scary."
Instead, the mother and daughter witnessed the moment their house suffered a direct hit from the storm.
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A video of the shocking moment shows Lewis recording by the floor-to-ceiling windows of her home, which lead into the yard, as she happily announces there's a "thunderstorm" outside.
Rain pelts the windows and the sky is gray and thick with clouds—and all of a sudden a huge flash of white takes over the room, along with a loud crash.
A shriek can be heard from inside the room, before the video switches to show the damage—plugs and switches blown out by the lightning strike, left blackened and broken in two.
Lewis explained to Newsweek that she and her daughter had been "counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder, just as I had done when I was a child" in order to "distract" her from her fear of the storm.
But, she said, "the storm quickly intensified. The thunder became incredibly loud, the lightning seemed very close, and before we knew it, the storm was directly overhead."
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Lewis was trying to act "relaxed and confident" to help her daughter feel safe—but "all of a sudden, there was an enormous bang" and brilliant flash of light."
Her daughter started "screaming," and Lewis recalled a horrifying moment when she thought her daughter had been hit, as they were so "stunned" that she "couldn't process what we'd just seen and heard."
The family then noticed a burning smell in their home, and Lewis and her husband began checking the house—where they noticed that "two plugs had been blown straight out of their sockets and were completely burnt."
It was at that point that the reality sun in, as Lewis put it: "The lightning hadn't just struck nearby—it had struck our home."
"Thankfully, nobody was injured, but it was an experience we'll never forget," she said.
Direct lightning strikes are rare, but can happen. In the United States in 2025, there were 21 lightning fatalities, and 14 in 2024, according to the National Weather Service.
So far in 2026, there have been four fatalities: in Wisconsin, Illinois, and two in Florida.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Emma Lee-Sang
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