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Friday, August 15, 2008. Dottie phoned this evening and said we must be in for some bad weather because there is lightning everywhere. I went out to look. It was heat lightning, and it was putting on a show better than any fireworks display.
I drove a couple of miles to a knob looking over the western sky. Thunderheads were massed on the horizon. Lightning was sparking and zipping between these thunderheads. No sounds of thunder, just that silent light show. One of the columns of clouds was black, backlit with red light. Lightning would crackle through and across this rampart of thunderheads, with purplish and greenish glows.
Only at the hottest time of year, in deepest summer, do you see heat lightning, but this was the most spectacular I've ever seen. I was parked along someone's fenceline with the car windows down. Night crickets and cicadas sang in the grass. The night was breathless--not a leaf moved. I ooh-ed and aah-ed at the magnificent sight until someone drove slowly by--probably wondering what I was doing there.
I went home and phoned Dottie and said it's not gonna rain, it's just heat lightning. "Just." Nature should've charged admission for that show. susil
