Awesome Light Show!

Three straight days of big time thunderstorms are leaving some of us feeling a little shell-shocked. This shot shows the storms last night lighting up the Chattanooga area.
The thunder really shook the house last night, literally causing the windows to rattle, and sending our dog Dudley cowering under the table. He hates nights like this. Chattanooga averages 56 days with thunderstorms a year, although right now it feels like this number is way too low.
The reason your house shakes is the 50,000 degree F heat the lightning generates causes the air to expand rapidly. And BOOM! Thunder with the same loudness in decibels as a jet aircraft at takeoff. Except the runway is in your yard.
There has been a network of special antennas across the United States since the late 80s to dectect and map where lightning is hitting the ground. In the lower 48 states an average of 20 million lightning strikes has been recorded. According to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, (NSSL) about half of those strikes have more than one place where the lightning hits the ground. So it's estimated that 30 million points on the ground are struck each year. And there's 5 to 10 times as many lightning flashes in the clouds or between clouds. Wow!
Lightning like what's pictured here can travel across the sky 60 miles or more according to NSSL. The longest bolt recorded stretched over the skies of Dallas-Ft. Worth 118 miles. (Everything's bigger in Texas don't ya know.)
There are devices you can buy to detect lightning at your home. I have a pretty reliable lightning detector of my own. 20 to 30 minutes before a storm starts rattling my house, Dudley starts searching for tables to hide under.
He thinks it's pretty awesome when the light show is over.