Lightning Storm

As I was heading home tonight, I noticed that the sky was growing more and more threatening. When I walked in the door, I felt lucky to avoid being rained on--but as it turned out, rain was not on the menu. Lightning was.

Soon after I sat down to relax, I noticed some lightning outside. Well, nice and normal--I like lightning. I like to listen to the thunder, too. Once there was a lightning storm at my work, real close by, and I went outside to watch and listen. One bolt cracked down and hit a lightning rod atop an apartment building just a block away, right in my view--the blast of sound was just about instantaneous. Now, that's entertainment!

Tonight, it was far away, but something was strange. I noticed some lightning out of the corner of my eye as I sat in my living room. Then again a few seconds later. Then again, and again. I thought I was imagining it--sometimes, reflections off the frames of my glasses can appear to be something else. But when I went to the window, I was right--there was a hellacious lightning storm going on in central Tokyo

Lacking my digital video camera (at school, for a project), I got out my trusty digital camera and took some shots of it (above right, and below). Unfortunately, it was hard to catch the full feeling of it--it was far too light for a good time-exposure shot. But the camera has a movie mode, so I took several 30-second movies (the time limit for higher-quality movie files). I then edited some of the shots together; they are available here. Like with the Bon Matsuri movie, you must have Quicktime and/or the ability to view MPEG-4 files. This movie is only about 500KB in size, and is reduced in size--but you'll get a better idea about the storm from it.