After picking up dinner at the nearby Chick-fil-A on Solomons Island Road, Nancy McCoy and her son heard a thunderous boom tear through the sky.

When she heard the thunder, it was so loud that she assumed lightning had actually struck the Chick-fil-A. But as she pulled into her driveway on Lee’s Lane in Edgewater, she realized the strike occurred in her own front yard.

Debris was strewn all over following the strike and debris flew as far as 50 yards into their neighbors’ yards, McCoy said.

After the strike, the McCoy’s 100-year-old oak tree looked like a giant candy cane with a bold strip of wood wrapped around it where the lightning had blown the bark off.

No one was injured from the strike, but the McCoys found a woodpecker that was killed during the storm that often visited their tree. 

David McKeever, a Davidsonville resident who was at the home on Lee’s Lane, compared the noise he heard inside the house to a .50-caliber rifle being shot off inside his living room.

Check out Patch’s up-close look at the tree and what kind of damage it caused during Wednesday night’s storm.

Do you have a crazy story from Wednesday’s storm? Tell me in the comments.