As I was doing some research for my column one night last week, a really bad storm came sweeping through the D.C. metro area. At first, I didn’t think that it was too terrible, so I mostly ignored it and kept working. However, the storm had other ideas.
The thunder quickly went from a distant rumble to a series of those pronounced summer boomers that we all know. Just as I was considering shutting down my computers, there was a brilliant flash of light, one of the brightest I have ever experienced. It was as if a million flashbulbs were going off at the same time. It was so brilliant that the sheer whiteness blasted through the windows, temporarily washing out all other colors in my home office and nearly flash blinding me.
This was followed by what I can only describe as a deafening electrical crack and a thunderous explosion that shook the windows and gave me a heck of a jump scare. I can see why Thor tosses lightning bolts around. Even a near miss can cause you to almost die of fright.
I believe the cracking noise must have been the lightning bolt itself since I have never heard anything like that before, while the explosion was most certainly the following thunder. Back when I was a reporter in Southern Maryland, I used to report on the weather sometimes—yes, I know that’s super exciting—but I learned little tricks like counting the seconds between the flash of the lighting and the sound of the thunder to determine how far away the center of a storm was located, or how far away the lightning was hitting. In this case it almost, but not quite, seemed instantaneous.
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