One of the very few things I miss about
St. Louis is summer thunderstorms... Sheets and sheets of rain with house rattling thunder claps and
giant bolts of lightning ripping through the clouds.
You don't get that much around here -- At least not the thunder and lightning part. Maybe you'll get one or two good loud booms with an all day storm. There's almost never lightning.
...Except for last night. Apparently there's been some sort of "monsoonal air"
moving through the bay area; causing a big storm around midnight. It was too far away to hear any thunder, but
our third floor bedroom window provided an excellent view of the lightning. It was amazingly consistent.... Striking every two or three minutes... Always within the same few areas. The majority were smaller contained vertical strikes, but every five or so would be of the giant, horizontal, fingering off in every direction type. We must have laid there watching it for a good half an hour.