I have no idea how many times I've seen this in 10 years of repairing computers...I always had to keep a few modems in stock when I had a shop, every storm that rolled through would wipe out at least a half dozen.
You can minimize the risk with a little knowledge and preparation. Lightning hits phone lines a lot more often than power lines, 90% of the time when I saw lightning damage all it wiped out was the modem. Occasionally one will take a bad hit and it will fry motherboard, video card, hard drive and/or power supply, but usually just the modem.
Get a surge protector. Not a $10 el cheapo, a good one, minimum 700 jules. It'll cost yoou around $50 but it's worth it. Make sure it has plugs for the phone line. (DSL runs through phone lines too, broadband is not exempt.)
Any time a storm comes in, unplug the phone lines at the wall plug. It's a good idea to shut the computer down and unplug the surge protector, lightning can't damage anything that's not plugged in. And it will hit power lines, I've also seen occasions someone lost TV, VCR, DVD, stereo, computer, you name it. Most often though, it's just the modem. If you leave the phone lines plugged in, chances are the surge protector will stop it, but why take chances?
Keep current backups, at least you did have that one covered, most people don't. I use a usb drive, soon as I record anything it goes on a usb drive and is backed up on another computer, then CD. If anything happens, it's still available. On the USB drive I can also carry it in my pocket if I want to play it for anyone.
I'm building a computer for recording now, this is one of the reasons it won't have an internet connection at all, that and Windows is such a security risk online. I don't like to put win2000 online, and absolutely refuse to put XP online, in fact I don't even like to have XP in the same room with me...I'm running ME on this machine (laptop), but only because it's too slow to handle Linux well. I've tried Mandrake 9.2, it runs quite stable but it's slow. So I keep ME and try to be extra careful online.
Get a good surge protector or battery backup (UPS). Make sure it has phone plugs, if you're home when bad weather rolls in, unplug it. If you're gone, maybe it will do the trick. I'm next door in Louisiana, we got that weather just before you did, it got plenty bad here. I've seen several trees down and lots of big limbs, a good friend got a huge limb through her storage trailer.
Lotsa luck....hope this helped...