Dramatic photos show tree burning from the inside out

When firefighters from the Ridgeville Township Volunteer Firefighter Department arrived on the scene to extinguish a burning tree Tuesday morning, they were met with a particularly challenging job.

Lightning from some early morning storms had struck and ignited a tree near a home in Ridgeville, Ohio, a town between Dayton and Cincinnati in southwestern Ohio. But firefighters came across a unique site when they arrived. Rather than finding a tree engulfed in flames, they instead saw a tree burning from the inside out.

"Lightning can do some crazy things and we had a tough time getting to every hot spot in this tree trunk," the department posted on Facebook along with the photos. "Big thanks to Moyer's Tree Service for coming out this morning to help get this tree cut down for us and the homeowner so we could fully extinguish the fire."

Comments on the post ranged from awe surrounding the power of nature and the beauty of the imagery to lamenting the loss of what appeared to be an old tree.

Rounds of thunderstorms rumbled through southwestern Ohio on Tuesday morning, delivering bouts of lightning, heavy rainfall and gusty winds.

In Wilmington, Ohio, roughly 20 miles southeast of Ridgeville, the National Weather Service office in the area spotted two shelf clouds by noon. These clouds are typically associated with a solid line of storms.

Severe storms would roll through the area the following day, churning up a tornado in Clermont County, Ohio, that would injure at least three people when the tornado struck the town of Goshen, located 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati. Preliminary findings from NWS survey teams Thursday found that an EF1 tornado had also touched down in Brown County near Lake Lorelei on Wednesday.