A Southboro, Massachusetts family came within feet of being struck by lightning on Tuesday, and the entire incident was caught on camera.

Brad Robillard had just got home with his son and daughter. “It sounded like a bomb was going off,” Robillard said. 

As he went to get his daughter out of the back seat of his pickup truck, an explosion happened right behind him.

“I had literally just told my son that the chances of getting struck by lightning are pretty slim,” said Robillard. “It was the hair raising on the back of your neck, then immediately right after, it went off.”

Robillard knew there was thunder and lightning in the area. He counted to “10 Mississippi” before getting out of the car. It’s common teaching to determine how close lightning is. You start the count after you hear thunder and then divide by 5. It gives a rough estimate of how many miles the last lightning strike was.

“I had counted to 10 before we got out of the car and I’m like yeah, it’s OK. I never thought it would be on top of us on the next one,” said Robillard.

In the video you can see an explosion happening right behind him, but he doesn’t believe that is the lightning strike. There is a tree in his backyard with a line of bark shaved off the side. He thinks the lightning struck the tree, ran into a metal fence in their backyard, and then climbed their home and exited from a soffit at the roof. There are burn marks at the soffit and scorch marks on parts of the fence.

“The path of least resistance, then that big explosion behind me,” said Robillard.

The surveillance footage of the incident made quick rounds on the internet, but Robillard is still trying to wrap his head around what happened.

“At the time it’s like, ‘Wow what is going on?’ Then we ran inside and the adrenaline wears off, that’s what you start thinking about,” said Robillard.