Bolt from the blue as lightning strikes twice

While folklore may suggest that lightning demurs from striking the same place twice, it apparently shows no such restraint with people.

Don Frick might have been mulling over that distinction at the weekend after he was hit by a bolt from the heavens on Friday - 27 years to the day after first being struck by lightning.

Mr Frick emerged shaken, with only a burned zip and a hole in the back of his jeans, from his latest high-voltage experience.

The 68-year-old was attending a festival in Pennsylvania when a storm rapidly closed in. He and six others sought refuge in a shed shortly before lightning struck the ground nearby, with the strike sending a shock through him and four others.

"I'm lucky I'm alive. It put me up against the wall," Mr Frick said. "When I came to and realised I was alive, the first thing that came to my mind was that I'm pretty lucky." None of the other people in the shed were seriously injured, he said.

Twenty-seven years earlier, Mr Frick had been driving a tractor-trailer when its antenna was struck by lightning, injuring his left side.