Actually the whole house surge suppressor does nothing to help a lightning strike on/through your house. What you've probably installed is a MOV based surge arrestor which means that surge coming through the line will get damped and taken down. So, yes if the strike hits your on-pole transformer it will more than likely minimize the damage to your appliances. However, that case of a house being struck near you and burned down - well, the MOV does nothing for that because you aren't giving the strike an easier path to ground. it will still blow through whatever it is going to go through (trees, houses, etc) until it finds ground. A lot of houses burn down with a lightning strike for whatever reason. Not sure if its the lightning causing the fire or the resultant electrical charge frying everything in its path, but it is an issue when a strike happens. I think people need to understand that it isn't a lightning rod that gives protection. Get a qualified study and get some decent information. I don't see how you can decide that 'lightning rods weren't going to provide enough protection to ensure" your house wouldn't be fried, yet believing that a MOV sink will ??? The 'rods' or air terminals are above the roof line and tied together to down conductors to ground. The question is whether the installer engineered it such that its adequately installed so that the coverage attracts a strike to go that route vs another - not whether it works or not. Now whether you want to pay for it, can afford to pay for it or don't want to pay for it can certainly factor into whether one installs it and I can understand that. But to say that installing a MOV sink will protect yourself over a lightning protection system is a bit absurd. (BTW, an adquate LPS contains a MOV sink as well, but its the other components tied into protecting the entire house) The other components are potential lifesavers as it protects the building- the mov sink only protects the powered items within the building.

In keeping with what Brickeyee stated about lightning following the wire, about 10 years ago I was working for a company installing sheet metal HVAC duct on a hospital project in Pensacola, Fla. We were on the 5th floor of a 6 story section which had the structural steel, steel decking and the concrete floors poured but the exterior walls were all still open. About 25' from where we were working there was a man making a butt joint weld on an 8" iron pipe for the chill water distribution system. At noon we all broke for lunch and went to our gang box and sat down, but the welder kept on working. All of the sudden, KA-BOOOOOM, Lightning struck the end of that 8" pipe where it still extended slightly over the edge of the building. We literally watched as a blue-white haze ran the length of the pipe, then through the welders hand and followed his stinger lead across the floor and over the side of the building about 150' away. We were all froze motionless, knowing only too well that the poor welder must be dead, then just as casual as you please, the welder reached up and lifted his hood, got to his feet and hollered over to us, "Did you guys see that? The damn welding rod just exploded into nothing, I never saw anything like that before in my life! WE ran over to him, thinking he had to be in shock or something, but believe it or not, he was totally unscathed, not so much as a minor burn save for the black scorch marks on his heavy leather gloves. When we told him what happened he couldn't believe it, but then he just fitted another welding rod, dropped down on his knee and said, I got to finish this weld before i go to lunch. He then tried to strike and arc and nothing happened so he walked over to the side of the building and looked down at the huge trailer mounted Hobart welding rig, or at least what was left of it. All four tires were blown off the trailer and the entire rig was on fire. The superintendent had seen the original lightning strike and saw the generator catch on fire so he had called the fire dept and they were just arriving as we looked down. Later the welder told us that the lightning had totally fried the windings in the generator and blew a hole in the diesel engine fuel tank, so it was the fuel that we saw burning. When they rolled up the stinger leads it was also discovered that there was a 8" wide scorch mark on the concrete deck all the way from the welders position to the point where the stinger lead went over the side of the building. It is believed that it was the stinger lead that saved the welder by directing the lightning through the insulated handle of the welding stinger and on to ground.

Seems to usually be at random, but I have two mildly entertaining/interesting stories that I know of. My previous neighbor once got struck by lightning while washing dishes and I would think that she never did that again during a thunderstorm. At the Biltmore estate in asheville (one of the best places for garden and landscaping inspiration) they have a row of tulip poplars o each side of the fountain (in the front). You would wonder why they haven't gotten very big considering how old some of the trees there are. A tour guide told me the reason they never got very big was because lightning would strike them during thunderstorms. I have seen about 5 of the trees replaced in the past 4 years, always with large B&B specimens. Here is a picture where you can see the row of tulip poplars:

Well, I love my street trees, bulgy or not. I don't think any tree can be 'overgrown'. That's an anthropocentric viewpoint. But they can be diseased and in an urban setting that is a problem. Streets are quickly repaired, trees not so much. Plane: Horse Chestnut: Monterey Cypress Beech. All are regularly assessed by the city arboricultural officer and sadly that last one has had to be felled. But it was sickness, not size which determined that decision