Annoyingly the strike doesn't always follow the obvious highest point
path. I was in a building with a large metal roof area underneath a much
higher supergrid pylon that took a direct hit. That is the lightning
went for the building rather than the higher pointy pylon. It was
incredibly loud and did for the switchboard and all mains power.


Yes its a bugger doing that, we had a very mice microwave unit on the
side of a church the silly thing could have taken the strike up the top
of the spire some 30 meters higher but it came in sideways and that was
that(...

As to the rolling thunder we had the mother of all storms over Cambridge
on the night if the 17th July that went on for 3 hours and there were
reported 200 flashes a minute in the area, continuous thunder it was
too!...


Useful site this one...

http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime

and


http://www.blitzortung.org/Webpages/...lang=en&page=1
--
Tony Sayer