Early Fireworks

Last night's thunder and lightning storm was one of the most severe I've seen since living in the Midwest! Lightning is beautiful but I'd prefer to see it in pictures like these! I was very unnerved by the eerie cast of it. Reminded me of some of the storms that have spawned tornadoes and straight-line windstorms in this area.
 I thought the storms in Kentucky and Georgia were bad but this one was right in there!Last month we got more rain but not as intense-it rained harder but for a shorter time frame this storm.The first round came about 3pm or so. I was at the library in Holland working on a paper  before leaving for Kalamazoo. The second storm hit about 4:30 or 5pm. I was already on my way to class. Tyler called and said that it was raining worse at the house than he'd ever seen! Once I got to school, it began to get dark. By 6:30 we had lightning and by 7pm we had torrential rain, thunder and lightning. Several times the lights flickered off and on. There were intense periods and then it would taper off only to get bad again. This went on for several hours. The drive home was unsettling. Periods of clearing, more thunder, more lightning, then rain like no other! By the time I hit 72nd Ave. it had really calmed down-but there were tree limbs down the entire length of our road. There are some really huge old trees that lean across the road. I hurried to get past those remembering that last month at least two people in Michigan were killed by falling trees! One neighbor had a pop-up camper for sale in their yard-it was completely flipped upside down! All my flowers were practically floating in their planters. I hope they live! I noticed that our power must have been out for awhile. The lights on the appliances and the digital clocks were blinking off and on. I just got a freezer FULL of beef! I was worried about the meat defrosting-thought we were going to have to host a community BBQ. It turned out to be fine though. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough fireworks until tomorrow night!