Always amazes me

Sitting in my garage watching this storm pass thru listening to the thunder and seeing the lightening strike. It is beautiful and frightening at the same moment. My dog Zander an 85lbs. yellow lab has now a become a lap dog  shaking like a jackhammer. The lighting strikes and 7 to 8 seconds go by and the thunder rolls across the sky so loud the car alarms go off, you can feel the power as it passes from one side of the valley to the other for nearly 30 seconds at the most.
It gives me goosebumps all over. Its just amazing 

Yes, last night was pretty cool. My Yellow Lab "Mia" was bouncing around the yard waiting for the birds too fall. 4 th of July the same thing, she knows someone somewhere is killing birds and she wants to be in the middle of it.

In the Doon we had hail, and 1.5" of rain in under 6 hours according to NWS.

My dog stayed zonked out during all of the lightening and thunder, but when I'm 80 I probably will prefer a good night's sleep to stormwatching too.

GF went outside to watch it. I used to live in Orlando, and that is thunder Alley, it wa snot uncommon to have 10,000 plus strikes in a storm, and we had storms roll through there almost every other day in the summer.  At the ER I worked at every once in a while we would get a golfer or a fisherman who wouldget electracuted from a strike.  As a kid the house I grew up in RI, had a cast iron sink, with black iron pipe.  Our House was built in the 20's or 30's and built on top of bedrock, a vein ran through our yard not less than 6 inches deep.  We used to sit in the kitchen and watch during ligthning storms the lightning hit the ground then a nano second later it would jump from the sink to the light over the sink and knock it out.  We kids thought it was great, my mom hated it.

 

  Agreed!  Years ago, (Back in the NAVY) while a garage to getting my cars doorlock repaird from a brak in, a lightning bolt it a tree across the small lot of the shop, first thing everyone there experienced was the FLASH, then the almost simultainously the BOOM it was freakishly loud.
  When everyone got their senses back a tree was split pretty much in half!  Thats the closest I've been to a lightning strike to date!

While doing tactical exercises with the Dutch Army, back in 1991 we had a rain storm come up while we had a dummy missle elevated.  No big deal, we begin walking back when CRACK, Boom and we all jumped!  a bolt hit very close to the ten or so of us.  Right after that, it was nothing A** and elbows to get indoors.  Needless to say that one scared all of us.

Since we're on the topic, what's the safest action to take when caught on a yak in the middle of a big thunderstorm?  About 4 years ago I was on the Sac on a late June afternoon when a massive thunderstorm developed.  The day went from bright and sunny to dark, windy, rain, lightning crashing down all around us, even a tornado warning (see pic below for the sky above us).  I thought shit, here I am sitting in a chunk of plastic, on the water, soaking wet holding onto a graphite rod and paddle with lightning strikes everywhere.  My wife called and asked how far we were from the launch, still had about 3 miles of river to get to our pickup point.  We decided to just stay in the yaks and hunker down into the brush along the shoreline for the next hour until things settled down. 

I know your supposed to stay away from tall trees, minimize your point of contact with the ground, etc.  In hindsight I imagine we probably should have beached the boats, found a field and squatted down in a gully or something? 

Caddyshack - Bishops Epic Golf Game
Tad
 

Id take rain over this! I was just enjoying the nice weather then woke up to this! We got 5 inches today

I did take a hike out to the flume which is only .75 miles from my front door according to my gps

  Agreed!  Years ago, (Back in the NAVY) while a garage to getting my cars doorlock repaird from a brak in, a lightning bolt it a tree across the small lot of the shop, first thing everyone there experienced was the FLASH, then the almost simultainously the BOOM it was freakishly loud.
  When everyone got their senses back a tree was split pretty much in half!  Thats the closest I've been to a lightning strike to date!

Had a similar incident back in the Philippines about 2-3yrs ago while vacationing. It was raining really hard that night. Then there was the almighty FLASH  then the BIG BOOM right away. It was the loudest thing I've heard and thought it was an explosion. The next morning, we learned that the lightning hit a neighbor's house. Broke their windows and some chinas. Scary.