'Starting 2023 with a bang': Video shows fiery lightning strike at North Carolina motorsports company

Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY
·2 min read
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A security camera captured video of a fiery lightning bolt exploding in a parking area at the headquarters at JR Motorsports in Mooresville, North Carolina, Wednesday morning.

"Starting 2023 with a bang," the team wrote when uploading the video to Instagram. The professional stock car racing team is co-owned by a group that includes Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his sister Kelley Earnhardt Miller. Earnhardt Jr. was NASCAR's most popular driver for 15 consecutive years.

The flash of lightning occurred in the back parking lot at 8:24 a.m., said Communications Manager Heath White. The video captured the stroke, when the lightning connected a charged region in a passing thunderstorm to the ground.

"The strike also jumped to the metal fence next to the truck which conducted it down roughly 300 feet of fence and terminated at our front gate," White said. "It was enough to short circuit the gate."

Sparks were flying Wednesday morning at the JR Motorsports shop as a bolt of lightning struck in a parking area, as seen in this screenshot from a video captured at the shop.
Sparks were flying Wednesday morning at the JR Motorsports shop as a bolt of lightning struck in a parking area, as seen in this screenshot from a video captured at the shop.

2022 lightning statistics

Mooresville is less than 20 miles from Kannapolis — North Carolina's lightning strike capital in 2022, according to an annual report this week from Vaisala Xweather. Vaisala operates lightning detection networks around the globe. Kannapolis is also the Earnhardt's hometown

Vaisala's report also revealed other lightning statistics for 2022:

  • The Hunga Tonga volcano explosion generated nearly 400,000 lightning events in just six hours, the most extreme concentration of lightning ever detected.

  • While Texas saw more than 27.6 million lightning events, Florida led in lightning density, with 109.8 lightning events per square kilometer.

  • Vaisala detected more than 34,000 lightning events associated with Hurricane Ian as it approached Florida on Sept. 27 and 28.

Watch the full video of the impressive lightning strike in North Carolina

More about the lightning strike

The bolt at JR Motorsports Wednesday came from "a very electrical" thunderstorm that moved over the area that morning, said Scott Krentz, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina field office. The thunderstorm was part of the same system that caused multiple tornadoes across parts of the South earlier in the week.

Brandt is the primary sponsor for JR Motorsports No. 7 team for 20 events during the NASCAR Xfinity Series 2023 season. The season starts Feb. 18 at Daytona International Speedway.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: JR Motorsports lightning strike in Mooresville, NC: Watch the video