Lightning strikes bring family memories
Hot weather quite often bring thunderstorms and this summer has been no exception. We had escaped some of the forecasted storms but the other night was pretty spectacular with a huge number of lightning strikes. It would have been nice had it not been at about 1 a.m. in the morning and if I’d not still been awake then. It did mean I got to watch the goings on and take a few photos. Next time I’ll make sure I’ve got my proper camera upstairs rather than having to rely on my phone.
Thunderstorms remind me of my childhood. Many a time I sat watching storms with my mum out of the window at night. Or one summer, a group of children sitting in next door’s garage on deck chairs, looking out under the open garage door and watching the storm.
I don’t get to do the same with N because he always sleeps through storms. We rarely get them through the daytime; certainly not like the one the other night with the amount of lightning that struck the sky within such a short time.
I knew the storm was coming thanks to people further south on Twitter saying how amazing it was. I checked out one of the lightning tracker websites (how fascinating are they?!) and could see the amount of lightning hitting in real-time across the UK. I knew it was just a short wait before it appeared up in Oxfordshire.
The storm didn’t disappoint. I could hear the thunder approaching from a while away with it gradually getting louder and closer.
There wasn’t actually that much thunder once the lightning arrived. It was just flash after flash lighting up the sky. Sheet lightning rather than forked.
The sky looked blue one minute, then purple, then pink, then slightly orange. It was pretty spectacular.
It died down for a bit before starting up again, more traditional thunder and lightning, with proper crashes of thunder. There was no chance of me getting to sleep before the worst of it it had gone past us. I think 2.38 was the latest time I saw before falling asleep. I was glad not to have missed it, but I know if I’d been asleep half an hour earlier, I’d have just slept through the whole lot and got a better night sleep.
Luckily I managed to capture both photos and videos of the lightning strikes on my phone which meant I could show N the next day. He didn’t seem that impressed so I guess he’s unlikely to be staying up and watching thunderstorms with me, the same way that I watched with my mum when I was a child.
How do you find thunderstorms? Do you watch them with your children?