Boom!
Half an hour ago, booming noises from outside summoned me to the window. Here on the fourth floor at work, a long row of big glass windows gives us a pretty good view of this area of the Peninsula. The sun was just setting (barely visible under the bottom edge of a thick dark cloud), and lightning began to strike all around, though it wasn't raining (or perhaps there was a very light rain that I couldn't see). Very exciting. I was counting seconds: some strikes maybe ten miles off, getting closer, and then a few minutes of very close strikes, bright tall jagged spikes splitting the sky, thunder immediately afterward. We saw some sort of power pole about two blocks from here get hit—I've never seen anything actually hit by lightning before. A puff of smoke, a tremendous crash of thunder, and our lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, though, and that was when it began to rain.
All the excitement died down shortly afterward.