What other weather can be brilliant and to some extent awesome to watch but provide so little chance of physical injury (unless you’re running home with some large metal rods)
We’re having a little lightening tonight over here in Northern Ireland. Can’t see much where my room is, but occasionally the sky is lit up though the fire escape and surrounding buildings. It feels like its going to clear the humidity out of the air too, its been quite uncomfortable over here of late.
I live in the attic of our house so thunderstorms at night are the best. The only time I’ve really been scared was when I was staying with a friend of mine in the country. We were probably about nine or ten, and we’d run up to the barn for something, but we were on the way back to the house when the skies just opened up. The lightning and thunder made it seem like the storm was directly over us. By the time we got back to the house, we were truly drenched and terrified.
-Lil
Yes, that kind of weather in the Mid Southern US makes me want to sleep with the window open and makes Mrs. Plant look for a tornado shelter. 
Not to quote Bob Seger or anything, but I love waking up to the sound of thunder in the night. It really is the best. Second is a heavy rainfall on Sunday morning when you don’t have to get up and do anything but lie there and listen to the rain.
Isn’t it strange that as a kid, you probably were terrified of lightning and thunder, but at some point, it becomes…soothing?
Needless to say, here in Las Vegas, Nevada we don’t get a whole lot of thunderstorms, but when we do get them, that lightning just cracks louder than I remember in the Midwest.
The best I ever heard was when I was working in Lugano, Switzerland…the thunder would echo through the mountains and literally rock your room! It was fantastic!
I am a huge fan of lightning storms at night. I love to sit and watch the lightning hit. When I was in Texas it was the best, because Texas is so flat.
You must’ve been in the panhandle or near Dallas or something - I’m from the Hill Country…notice the word “Hill” in the name? Hardly flat. And folks around Big Bend country might look at you askance if you described that as flat, too…
Regardless, I love nighttime thunderstorms, as long as there isn’t a bunch of hail or too much wind. I nice, torrential rain with lots of lightning (no “e” in that word, there…) and noise, but keep the hail and wind at home, please…
I am jealous. Every other country I have been to has spectacular lightening, what we call fork lightening.
We have (well all I have seen here in Auck) no forks. Just a momentary flash. I don’t know why/how geography robs us of the coolest lightening (even Australia gets it) but it sucks. Watching the whole sky flash is ok but real fork lightening is awesome.
Saskatchewan gets phenomenal lightning storms, too. Flatlanders of the world, unite!
I would mention that IMO the most beautiful and impressive shows are thunderstorms over the sea.
It seems rare in Northern Ireland too, I’ve only seen it on two different storms. One was quite spectacular (although probably what everyone else around the world has already seen) and was properly forked through the sky, the other was a bolt fizzling through the air to hit the top of a watch tower at the permanent (at the time) Army checkpoint at the border.
Sheet lightening can be just as good though, especially at night when you can see everything outside illuminated for the blink of an eye 
Gee, Pushkin, I live in Northern Virginia and our summers are usually quite miserable. We can count on strings of days when the temperature hits 90° at 10:am and the humidity is 90% as well. You know it’s bad when you can see the air you’re breathing. Just when you think you can’t stand it anymore, the heat and humidity intensify, the sky grows dark, and the show begins. Lightening lights up the sky and the thunderclap sounds like cannonfire. The rain starts coming in sideways and for a day or two, it’s almost pleasant. Then the cycle starts all over again.
Pardon me for being stupid, but I thought that summers in Great Britain were quite cool and dry. I take it that the summers can be just as miserable in your neck of the woods as well?
Is Texas flat? Jimmie Dale Gilmore quoted another musician as saying that you can stand in Lubbock and see 10 miles in any direction. If you stand on a tuna can, you can see 20 miles.
I, too, love a thunderstorm at night (unless I have to get up and participate or run a Skywarn net). Not exactly the same, but I house-sat once for a woman who lived in a building with a tin roof. Just the metal roof, no insulation. A heavy rain fell, and it was awesome.
Vlad/Igor
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O.K. folks, it’s lightning, not lightening…
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Usually they are, but sometimes the weather just takes its fancy I guess. I don’t mind the warmth as long as there’s a cooling breeze, but the humidity just takes it out of me. A sticky feeling that doesn’t go away even in the shade, bleurgh
I moved to California from Maryland, and I don’t miss that kind of weather at all. But I do miss the thunderstorms.
One of the best experiences of my life was watching a thunderstorm over the lake up at our cottage in Parry Sound, late at night. The crash of thunder; pitch black with flashes of silver and white; wild, writhing shadows everywhere. It was awe-inspiring.
Unfortunately, I don’t get to see much of the sky’s fireworks in Toronto, but I still loves me a good thunderstorm.
I remember when I was 9 or 10, and staying at my grandparent’s North Dakota farm, watching as a line of coulds rolled across the sky just a a little south of us. I could look up from the porch, and see blue sky, and then look across the road at this mass of dark thunderheads marching east. I swear the storm looked like it was walking on legs of lightning.
Oooh, that’s good.
On Vancouver Island, we don’t get a lot of electrical storms. The last one I remember that I saw had to be eight years ago now. We lived in a condo with a covered balcony and I had a good view of the storm. I sat out there with a drink, some snacks and just watched the show.
Growing up in the West Kootenays, there were good storms every summer, but they didn’t last long–they’d go over the mountains and then be in the next valley over.
Red Deer, Alberta, summer of '83.
Great storms. Prairie storms rock–you can watch them approach for hours, and then when they’ve arrived overhead, you can see it all.
Bring on the lightning. (Except in dry forests with forest fire risk.)