Storm delivers rain, aerial light show, damage to trees, poles.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

Ka-boom!

Or, to be more precise, KA-BOOM!

Alarm clocks didn't get the chance to sound off Tuesday when a pair of early-morning thunderstorms rolled through town, rousing thousands of pets, kids and grown-ups from their summer slumbers.

Many residents swore that the storm's center was right above their house. "It was pretty wild," Margaret Sholaas, of north Eugene, said.

In Eugene, lightning struck several trees - including a 100-year-old Norway spruce in the downtown park blocks - and more than a dozen utility pole transformers. Electrical surges caused about 30 traffic signals around town to go into blinking mode, with four signals sufficiently damaged to require repair, city officials said.

The storm also produced the first measurable rain in Eugene - .07 of an inch between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. - since June 21.

Several trees outside the Eugene-Springfield area caught fire and required emergency attention after being struck by lightning. Lane Rural Fire District crews responded to a troublesome burning tree in the Triangle Lake area.

Across the state, the storm produced more than 9,400 lightning strikes and at least 65 small fires in forests, the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center reported.

The Willamette National Forest alone had 22 reported "smokes" - fires of less than a quarter-acre in size - by 1 p.m. and braced for more as another storm system moved in during late afternoon.

No injuries were reported in Eugene-Springfield, but an 8-year-old California girl was hospitalized after being struck by lightning while sleeping in a tent near her grandparents' home in Lebanon. The girl, with burns on her upper body and marks on her lower body where the electricity exited, was taken to Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, where she was in the intensive care unit and listed in serious condition Tuesday night.

The girl was in the tent with her father and sister when lightning struck a tree about 20 feet away, traveled down the tree, into the ground and into the tent. The father and sister were sleeping on air mattresses and weren't hit, Lebanon fire marshal Mark Wilson said.

About 1,000 Eugene Water & Electric Board customers were temporarily without power as a result of the storm, spokesman Lance Robertson said. An additional 1,500 customers suffered a momentary loss of power, including large industrial customers such as Weyerhaeuser in Springfield and Hynix in west Eugene.

At the Weyerhaeuser paper mill, operations didn't resume for five hours after lightning struck a nearby substation about 8:20 a.m., company spokesman Mike Moskovitz said.

The first storm rolled into the area before 5 a.m., with a second, smaller storm following about 8 a.m.

City crews took down a 90-foot-tall Norway spruce in downtown Eugene after lightning struck about two-thirds of the way up the trunk. The tree suffered major cracking as the lightning spiraled down to the base, city public works spokesman Eric Jones said.

A Douglas fir on Hunsaker Lane near River Road and a redwood near 27th Avenue and Madison Street in southwest Eugene also took hits, Jones said. The tree on Hunsaker was to be taken down as soon as possible by a tree removal service, he said.

While forecasts had indicated a slight chance of thunderstorms, most people were caught off guard - including state climatologist George Taylor at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Winter storms are much larger and thus easier to predict, while summer storms are relatively small and so can be harder to anticipate "even a few hours in advance," Taylor said.

Like others, Taylor said he knew lightning was close by how quickly booming thunder followed it. Sound moves at about 1,100 feet per second, or about a mile in five seconds, and Taylor said he was on the OSU campus when he heard one thunderclap about a third of a second after seeing lightning flash.

Sure enough, he said, a lightning strike was later confirmed - a few hundred feet from his office.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CAPTION(S):

A tree was hit by lightning at Eighth Avenue and Oak Street.