When the thunderclouds came, you could see amazing scenes of lightning flashing all over the place. It was beautiful, especially when the lightning would go up and radiate around the clouds in a fan pattern.

It was common to see a lot of lightning during heavy storms. On more than one occassion, a bolt came within a few hundred yards of me with a powerful crackling boom.

One time, I was returning home from work during a strong rain that had a large amount of lightning. While I walked up the stairs, a bolt came down from almost directly above me. The sonic boom it released was so loud that it shook the building and set off every car alarm within a 100 yard radius.

The same thing happened during some company softball games. All of our games were played at TK Wendl's, a local sports bar in SE Urbana. Unless lightning strikes the same place two times or there's a tornado on the pitcher's mound, they don't call off any games due to weather.

We actually played in the middle of a thunderstorm with lightning and rain pouring down. During all of this, I was wondering if they might be sued if someone was hit by lightning.