Mother Nature on a Bad Night

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This was shot from my bedroom window on June 1, 2011. Throughout that day, we got a multi-county tornado watch, upgraded to warnings. Western MA got hit with more than one tornado and at least four people died. But we here in central MA still got battered by lightning storms (earlier it was spider web lightning and by evening it was the sheet variety you see here). This was 8:20-8:25 PM at the worst part. Note: 12 hours later, we're having a perfect day.

In all my decades of living here, I have never seen a lightning storm this violent or constant. We were more fortunate than many of the poor folks in Hampden Co (western MA, where I'd lived 22 years ago). But just the fact that we'd get tornado warnings in this state is in itself extraordinary considering Massachusetts' famous hills and mountains. And if we here can get tornadoes, what else is possible? Earthquakes in Manhattan? Flash floods in Baja?

Amazingly, we never once lost power, even though we had flashlights literally in hand.