A lightning bolt hit the One World Trade Center’s tower Saturday as tropical storm Henri moved closer to New York City.
The clip was filmed in slow motion and captured by Ryan Nystrom at approximately 7:30 p.m. from a residential area in Brooklyn Heights, according to Local 12.
NBC News shared the video showing a grey, overcast sky when the lightning suddenly struck the tip of the building’s spire and cast a purple glow before fading away:
“One WTC is safe during lightning strikes because of its state-of-the-art protection system, which is based on the same concepts pioneered by Benjamin Franklin. Lightning rods now are mounted on the roof tops of buildings, houses and 4 World Trade Center,” the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey explained in a 2016 blog post:
Following Franklin’s modern lightning protection system, One WTC is a super-sized Faraday cage that distributes electrical current around the outside of the tower, with none of it passing through the interior space of the building. The current discharges into the bedrock below the tower and dissipates into the earth. A Faraday cage is an enclosure made of conductive material that blocks electric fields. Elevators, MRI scan rooms and aluminum insulated bags are all examples of Faraday cages.
Meanwhile, cleanup was scheduled to take place throughout New York City after tropical storm Henri unleashed a massive amount of rain, ABC 7 reported Monday.
“According to the National Weather Service, New York City recorded its wettest day since 2014 as 4.45 inches of rain fell in Central Park. Nearly all of that fell during a two-hour window, between 10 and 11 p.m. Central Park saw 1.94 inches – the wettest hour on record for New York City,” the outlet said.
Video footage showed the storm hitting the shores of Long Island:
“We could have been worse, not to say it was all that good, but it could have been a lot worse,” Joe Gaviola, keeper of the Montauk Lighthouse, told NBC News.