Sorry Einstein forgot about this question, I saw it while camping during an electical storm in Kakadu National park in the Northern Terretories of Australia. Just about the scariest evening of my life, a ball of lightning about a metre across hit a tree about 20 metres from us, it stayed in the tree for about 10 - 15 seconds (it was probably less than that but felt like more!) then moved down the tree and appeared to dissipate into the ground, almost like it just fell out of the tree. When we checked the tree in the morning one branch had been snapped right off, probably by the blast while two other appeared to have almost burnt right through... well one of them came off in my hands!