Lightning strike blows up 40-year-old tree in his yard, Springfield man says

Jackson Cox said he was watching television when he saw a flash a little after noon.

"Sounded like a stick of dynamite," he said. The light was "like a picture flash."

Cox went outside to find a tree on his property, in the 3100 block of Dayton Road, destroyed.

The tree "blew up," he said. "It went everywhere. On my roof. Neighbor's yard. Across the road."

He said his dog ran off in the tumult of the lightning strike and noise, but Cox said he found the animal a little later.

What's to become of the tree he said has been in his yard about 40 years?

It will become mulch, Cox said.