Watch: Kids run for cover as lightning strikes feet away in California neighborhood

“It was loud, shook the house. Like an earthquake..." A mother in Huntington Beach filmed a terrifying moment when lightning struck a palm tree just feet from her children.

What started as a bit of backyard weather-watching turned into a terrifying near-miss for one Huntington Beach family. The whole thing was caught on camera and made for some incredible images.

Penelope Buckner and her brother were standing outside admiring Tuesday’s thunderstorm in Southern California when lightning suddenly struck a palm tree just feet away from them. The children bolted for cover as the bolt cracked through the neighborhood.

“It was amazing, but it scared me a little bit,” Penelope told local news station NBC 4.

Her mother, Tiffanie Buckner, who filmed the moment, said the strike caught them completely off guard. “We were counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder - everything was far away,” she said. “I wasn’t scared of the lightning; it was the loud sound that scared me, honestly.”

The strike hit a tree in the yard of neighbor Keith Fulthorp, who described the impact as seismic. “It was loud, shook the house. Like an earthquake, kind of,” he said.

“We just felt like the whole house shaking,” his daughter Alena added. “It was crazy.”

The lightning strike split one tree down the middle and caused serious damage to another one. Both trees caught fire, Fulthorp said. Luckily, the rain put out the fire and no one was injured.

"If you pull out a frame from the video," AccuWeather Meteorologist and Digital Producer Jesse Ferrell pointed out, it looks like there is a tiny lightning strike between the girl and the camera."

"This is known as a 'ghost image,' Ferrell explained. "It's a reverse reflection of the lightning strike on the camera's lens. It happens in many lightning videos. At that distance, a lightning strike that close would far over-expose a lightning strike."

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