Summer storm brings rain, sparks fires - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

A series of pop-up storms brought welcome rain to parts of central Indiana, but also sparked fires in two Hamilton County homes.

Residents of one Fishers neighborhood, near 126th Street and Olio Road, saw a bolt of lightning land somewhere across the street, but saw no fire. Ten minutes later, they noticed a neighbor's roof ablaze. No one was home at the time of the strike and no one was injured.

It was one of two lightning fires in Fishers Tuesday night. The other fire, which firefighters described as "minimal," happened in the Canal Place neighborhood.

Elsewhere in central Indiana, people watched and welcomed heavy rain.

"I didn't mind standing out in it," said Lisa Luster. But as she watched the sky outside the market in Acton, she worried.

"People worry about their lawns drying up, I worry about my well drying up. Just wasn't enough rain. Too little too late," she said.

"We were going to put on our war paint and do a rain dance," said Brenda Lewis. "How wonderful. We really needed this bad. The trees are gonna get watered now and the grass. It's good we got that rain."

But on the same porch, Brian was skeptical.

"Hardly nothing," he said of the rain. "Don't think it's going to make the grass any greener. Gonna take weeks of this."

On a normal night, this would be a normal summer storm. Traffic slowed to a crawl on I-74 near Post Road all the way to Acton. Motorists worried about low visibility and hydroplaning.

But this was no normal summer night, just a temporary reprieve for some from a draining drought.