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Meteorologist: Summer Has Been Especially Stormy

Severe thunderstorms which swept through Southern Maine on Tuesday and Wednesday sent two women to the hospital, felled trees and started fires.

James Brown with the National Weather Service in Gray says although rare, people are struck by lightning, and sometimes killed, every summer. This year, he says, seems to be an especially active year for severe storms.

"And that's just a cold pool of air up over our heads, and you get a little daytime heating, and when that daytime heating occurs, and the air gets up in that cool pool above, it generally becomes free to rise and it forms our showers and our thunderstorms," Brown says.

Brown says the safest place to be in a thunderstorm is in a sturdy building, away from doors, windows and lightning conduits such as indoor plumbing.

Late Wedneday afternoon, Christine Poore of Gorham was standing in her bathroom when her home was struck by lightning; the bolt blew out a light fixture and entered her body where it left blisters on her feet. She was the second person this week to be struck by lightning. On Tuesday, an Oxford woman was also struck as she briefly went outside during a thunderstorm.