Lightning takes out a tree, and alas, it’s the wrong one

CORNWALL — Thunderstorms were bouncing around the area in the mid-afternoon on Friday, May 20. Students at Cornwall Consolidated School ended up heading home in the heaviest rain.But the real drama came just as they finished loading onto school buses in the main driveway. With a loud crash, a bolt of lightning hit a tree across the road, near the entrance to the parking lot. As the lightning raced to the ground, it tore strips of bark from the trunk, blew them to bits and scattered them hundreds of feet away.The buses were pointed in the other direction, and the majority of students only heard the strike, but they still had an exciting story to tell their families.The mature tree is slated to be removed, now that its roots have been damaged and its trunk split. The incident followed a decision earlier in the week by the school board to remove two dying trees from the front of the school. “Why couldn’t lightning have hit one of them,” was the oft-heard comment as a crowd arrived at the school later that day for a town meeting.