A Sizzle in the Sky

Observation: When lightning is close enough, of course, you hear the thunder. When it's really close, you first hear a stupendous cracking noise, like the world's biggest gun going off. And when it's really close the first thing you hear is an electrical sizzle. I heard that this morning. It's pretty cool. If lightning got any closer I imagine it would hit you.

I spend a big part of the day looking things up on Wikipedia that I get curious about. They had a section on notable lightning strikes that was kind of interesting. It seems lightning struck the Church of St. Nazaire in Brescia, Italy in 1769, igniting the 100 tons of gunpowder in its vaults, killing 3000 people and destroying a sixth of the city. I don't know if the practice of not storing gunpowder in churches dates from this incident but I would think so. In August 2004 a lightning strike killed 31 Jersey cows sheltering under a tree in Denmark. This kind of thing is sometimes called "experiential learning."