Why did I hear Steve Irwin's voice in my head?

Well it is a gorgeous country!

yep!! you're going to be looking for them now

Whaaaa Skavi!
I was supposed to travel through your country this year, but plans got messed up... I'm sooooo bummed!

It's one of my biggest dreams!

The weather is definitely acting strange here (eastern suburb of NYC). Yesterday morning we had 5 inches of rain in less than an hour, and our train station was under water. Then, lightning hit not once, but twice - a transformer, so we had no electric service, and the cable service was disrupted. Not too far from where I live, there was a EF-1 tornado (any level tornado is extremely rare in this area) - then the big explosion in New York city - an old steam pipe blew up. Then I went to my acting class...

It was some kind of day...

Not sure you can blame that on the weather.

Yeah saw all that on my local Cape Cod news.....not that our weaeather has been any different.....

Last night, a lightning bolt shot right through our backyard, striking a tree and briefly sparking a fire! Fortunately, it rained so heavily that the fire was immediately extinguished. The aftermath of the most violent thunderstorm we had this season left us with a couple of thrown breakers and the well pump (I live in the mountains, not the city, so everyone has their own individual wells) needed to be replaced. Talk about dramatic! I felt the heat and electricity of the lightning bolt--it was that close.

When I was flying in the Grand Canyon, we used to sit out behind the heliport and watch lightning hitting the nearby pine trees. When the lightning hit, it would heat up the resin in the trees to such a high temperature - they would explode. Very dramatic - especially at night.

We watched a lighting storm one night.

After a while I found myself trying to get my head around the amount of electricity being discharged.

So much energy that it not only lights up the whole sky in a single flash, but creates a really loud sound...

Nature never fails to impress me.

I love it when the thunderstorms are cooking up in the sky at night, and the heat-lightning flickers kinda greenish and red. Sometimes the lightning comes so frequently that the whole sky stays illuminated for several seconds. I just stay up all night and watch.

Love them too, it's like the sky is turning on it's lights! The daytime ones are nice too if you get to see the rainbow. The ones we had Friday night, finally got rid of the humidity for awhile. But for Nature's beauty and awesomeness, I prefer Niagara Falls.

In the last 2 months 5 people got struck by lightning in The Netherlands which is a lot for this country. 4 of them died.

There are an exceptional lot of electric discharges.

But I just loooooove thunderstorms. I'm hoping there will be one tonight.

I don't think I've heard a truer statement...

We went a company picnic yesterday and although it rains here everyday (if we're lucky - we really need the rain...) we got caught right in the middle a torrent of rain, lightning and thunder so loud it felt like it blew out my eardrums. I just wish I'd caught it on tape... it was truly spectacular!

80+ people huddled together, and we couldn't move; the lightning was really close! Then most had to wade out to their cars... flash flood. Wow...

Maybe not the most impressive thunderstorm I’ve seen but the one that awed me the most was while offshore on a North Sea rig. It was during a night sampling program and with uninterrupted views you could see every fork from the cloud to the sea. Very bright!
The concern of being on essentially a big chunk of metal in the middle of the sea with lightening all around did override my awe eventually and I had to go inside. They told me it was perfectly safe but it just felt so wrong. I didn't go back out until it had passed