‘My miracle baby!’ NC lifeguard hit by lightning as storms, tornadoes raged
A North Carolina teen lifeguard is recovering at home after lightning struck her at a public pool during Monday’s severe storms that spawned two Charlotte-area tornadoes.
Brynnlee Steger saw a flash of orange and blue, turned to look at her mom and felt a lightning bolt zap her in the arm, the 15-year-old Carson High School junior told WSOC, The Charlotte Observer’s news partner.
She and another lifeguard had cleared visitors at the pool in the town of Landis ahead of the approaching storm clouds and winds, she told The Salisbury Post.
She was retrieving an umbrella from the pool deck when she heard the “loudest thunder” of her life and was hit, she told the newspaper.
Pain coarsed through her body then back to her left arm, she told WCCB. Doctors told her she suffered nerve damage and will need physical therapy, the station reported.
“It was an excruciating pain,” Brynnlee told The Salisbury Post. “It knocked me down.”
“It felt like my arm got blown off,” she told WBTV.
Her mom and her boss carried her to a sheltered concessions area and placed her on the ground, but she kept hyperventilating and “going in and out,” according to WBTV.
Rowan County EMS got her to a hospital, where she was stabilized and later released.
One of Monday’s tornadoes reached the Landis area around the time the lightning hit Brynnlee, although a National Weather Service storm-damage team reported no injuries from the twister.
That’s because it’s “far more likely” that lightning would have been near the funnel cloud and not within it, meteorologist Patrick Moore of the NWS office in Greer, South Carolina, told The Charlotte Observer Friday.
The tornado started as an EF-1 with 110 mph winds in Catawba County and uprooted countless trees on a 37.41-mile path into Iredell and Rowan counties, the damage survey team from the Greer NWS office reported Tuesday.
The twister weakened to an EF-0 with winds of 70 mph to 85 mph on the north side of Mooresville and briefly strengthened into an EF-1 again while entering Rowan County along N.C. 152.
Near Landis, the storm lost intensity and dissipated at 5:22 p.m., just east of Interstate 85 between Lentz and Daughtery roads, the NWS team determined.
Brynnlee and her mom, Sonya Steger, saw the nasty stuff coming and credit God with saving her life.
On Facebook, Steger thanked everyone for their thoughts and prayers.
“Please continue to pray as she recovers,” Steger said. “She is indeed my miracle baby! ... God will always carry you through the storm!”
This story was originally published August 11, 2023 at 2:15 PM.