Zap

Last night we had the most impressive thunderstorm I have ever seen. It all started a little before midnight, as I was trying to get to sleep. Bright flashes of lightning kept interrupting my descent into slumber, at a rate of several per minute. There was no thunder, though, at least for a while. As the storm crept closer we began to hear low rumblings, and the lightning became even more intense. I should have counted the flashes, but they were often interrupting each other, and the thunder was too. I kept thinking maybe the center of the storm had passed, when a huge peal of thunder would crash overhead. We opened the blinds for a while and just watched the show. The amazing thing was that the kids didn't wake up even though it lasted for an hour, with a few really deafening crashes.

I always wondered how much electricity we could get from lightning, if it were possible to capture safely. According to one random website I just found, "One storm can discharge enough energy to supply the entire U.S. with electricity for 20 minutes." I don't know how much we could get over the course of a year, but it would certainly be awesome to toast your bread indirectly with lightning power.

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