Monster thunderstorm effects

There was a gigantic thunder and lightening storm on Wednesday. I have never seen anything like it before - and our little kitten was stuck in between the windows in the kitchen and the windows in the living room, hit tiny ears tucked back, crouched down, his head flipping back and forth like he was watching a tennis match but it was which side of the house was going to light up brighter. We had lavender skies. It was beautiful, loud, brilliant - over 60,000 strikes - and destructive.

I watched the news reports on Thursday - cars and houses destroyed all over the country, trees blocking roads and in rivers, creating some flooding, massive limbs down in a number of cities. Today, I found another news report - in Sumava, a Czech national forest (the Czech portion of the park) over 20,000 trees were destroyed, more than half on the outskirts of one town.

Nature is amazing. I think of earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes as being devastating but is the first time I've heard of massive destruction by lightening, not flooding, lightening.