A FORMER furniture store owner has experienced a lightning strike on his home – for the second time.

James Everatt, 65, was at his Osgodby home with his partner Sue when they heard an “almighty bang” during a storm on Thursday evening.

Mr Everatt said: “My partner and I were just sitting, watching the 6pm news and there was an incredible amount of rain, but no thunder, then there was just an incredible bang.

“There was nothing before it, it was just an almighty bang, there had been no flash. Everything went out in the house, the TV, lights, everything. We had a dash round to see what had happened and saw water coming in through the loft hatch. I went up there and saw there were two huge holes through the roof. Each one you could have passed a football through, and water was pouring in.”

The lightning struck the roof of the property, blasting two holes in it, before travelling along the apex inside the roof, which features metal brackets attaching wood to brick, and bursting through two bricks at the end of the building.

Mr Everatt, who owned Everatt’s furniture store in Gowthorpe, Selby, until it closed last year, said the electrical surge caused by the lightning strike caused most electrical appliances in the house to fault, and it was too early to know how much the repairs would cost.

He said: “The house next door has a sun room that looks out onto our property, and they said the whole house had a blue aura around it after the strike.”

As if to prove the old adage wrong, this was not the first time Mr Everatt had experienced a lightning strike.

He said: “I used to live in Brayton, and when I was 14 or 15 our house in Baffam Gardens was also struck by lightning.

“We had a chimney stack and it took that completely off and then hit the ground in the garden. It made a hole in the lawn that you could put a broom handle in.”

North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service attended the scene to check for fire and remove loose debris, before patching up the roof with tarpaulin.

The downpours have caused problems at the University of York’s new Heslington East campus.

Water seeped into some of the buildings forming part of the £750 million expansion, and the issue is now being looked at in an attempt to stop it happening again.

A university spokeswoman said: “During recent heavy rains, there has been some water ingress into two buildings on the campus, the Ron Cooke Hub and the computer science building.

“This has resulted in some limited disruption while the affected areas were dried out. The drying-out phase is now complete and activity is back to normal. We are continuing to monitor the situation and are reviewing the potential sources of the water so we can put in place the necessary preventative measures.”

The organisers of the CultureShock festival, which was due to be held in Harrogate over the weekend, have been forced to cancel the youth arts event because of the bad weather, as it has left the site at the Yorkshire Event Centre waterlogged and unsafe. Anybody who has bought tickets will be able to get a full refund from the point where they purchased them, with a statement on the event’s website saying: “We would like to thank everybody for their support and we will be back next year better than ever before.”