Last night, around 4 in the morning, I was rudely awakened by lightning and the thunder that followed. Except, these strikes happened so close to my house, there was delay and the thunder BANG was the loudest thing I've ever heard. Scared me half to death when another strike hit nearby that made me jump out of bed. Everyone in my house was woken by it.

I'm not sure if anyone else had lightning strike so nearby (when your window is open too) but it's the loudest bang you'll ever here.

I was awake for about half an hour, and thunder struck every five seconds around here that it lit up the whole sky, and to make things worst, it was a dry thunder storm.

Anyone else have interesting lightning/thuder storm experiences?

Last week (when I was on holiday in Norway, in the mountains) I was walking around our house. I did hear the thunder, but it was far away from me. But suddenly I saw a white flash and almost the same time I heard the thunder. I did saw the lighting hitting the mountain at -what was it?- some 50m (165 feet) away from where I was walking.I was shocked and couldn't believe what I just saw
The thunder was so loud, I thought I was shot by someone

We had a power outages for at least one hour

Interesting stories. Lucky neither of you got hit by the lightning, especially you BlueWolf.

I haven't had any close calls, nor a good storm for a good while.