OMG!! Lightning strikes outside!!
 

Ok...it's 12 am where I'm at (lets just leave it at Northern Washington). I was browsing tfp before going to sleep and my brother rushed into my room, telling me lightnings are striking outside. So I pulled up the blinds to see, and what I see is spectacular!! About every 30 seconds or so, a stream of white, pure light lit up the dark night sky, followed by the roaring sound of thunder. And big surprised was that it's not even raining! The northern sky, I see have some clouds, thats where the lightnings take place, but the southern sky, it's clear, so clear that I can even see the big dipper with my naked eyes. I've never seen this before in my life, so this would be my first experience.

We enjoyed it so much that we went out try to take some pic. Unfortunately, our parents took the camcorder and the digital camera so we have to take it with a normal camera with films. Lightning strikes very fast but we did manage to capture one or two good shots, out of a whole role, we'll develop them when we get the chance and post 'em up later.

any ways, the question(s) is: Does any one experience this before? How rare is an occasion like this happens?

You must be my neighbour ;)

We have the same thing going on here.

Well hello there!

Did you enjoy the show nature put on for us?

HEy hi!. At this time I'm seing the lightning too.

I remember a couple of years ago we had a huge thunder/lightning storm as we were driving up a hill on South Hill, Puyallup, WA and we had to stop and watch it it was so incredible!

I have seen a tree completely obliterated several years ago. We were staying at a cabin in Tahoe and we were watching the rain come down. Then, out of the blue, we were all stunned to see this huge bolt rip straight through a huge pine tree. It was about 100 yards away from us. Truly amazing.

I love storms.It reminds me that everything is so much bigger than what I am familiar with.

I assume that what you saw was heat lightning?

that bastard storm kept my awake most the night .
one of the bolts or thunders ( i have my window covered) was near enough that it shook my house

I could see those lightning strikes from Victoria. I was at the beach and I could see them off in the distance. Pretty cool looking even from over here.

It stormed like shit here today too. Lightening must have hit something close by, because our cable is out.

Had one hit so close, a couple of weeks ago, that it set the car alarm off....

When a cold (cool) air mass hits this warm moist air coming in from the gulf---we get some violent storms....

but, this is hurricane season, so anything can happen...

We get those all the time in Colorado, course our weather is about as weird as it gets.

Have you seen lightning during a snowstorm? That's my favorite, whole sky, and everything just goes white.

Well, actually, my favorite, is a huge lightning storm that causes a massive power outage. Open the blinds, light some candles, and watch the show from the comfort of your home without any distractions.

All I ask before I die is to witness ball lightning. Man that would be so cool! :D

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning">Wikipedia entry for "Ball Lightning"</a>

Anyway, would love to see your pics :)

I love how artful forks of lightning are. It's like nature draws abstract art on a MASSIVE canvas that exist for only a second and then never again.

i love huge lightning storms like that. unfortunately, we don't get many like that up here in the NW. but i've seen plenty of awesome lightning storms when i've been in the midwest and east coast. it's just so freaking beautiful.

if you wanna get kickass shots of lightning, use a film SLR camera. Put it on a tripod and point it at the storm, zoomed all the way out, focused to infinity (sideways 8). Set the shutter speed to a very high number (if it's frequent lighning, 30 seconds. Less frequent, 1 minute/2 minutes - use your judgement based on the storm) Make sure the aperture is set low so you don't have too much light getting in during the shot. It looks AWESOME.

See it, yeah. Let it see you? No!