Loved ones of 18-year-old Michael Aiden Vargas share he died while doing what he loved–hanging with his dad on the water. He was kayaking with his father on Blackwater River in Milton, Florida, on May 31 when he was struck by lightning. “I heard a very large lightning strike, so loud that it was ear piercing and scared me,” a man nearby where the strike occurred told Pensacola News Journal. They let us know there was a lightning strike and didn’t say much else.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports lightning can strike as far as 25 miles out from a thunderstorm.