Thunderstorms are one of the ways that nature purges the cloying, muggy air, clearing away humidity and replacing it with either bright sky, or a cooler, breathable atmosphere. They are often quite spectacular, albeit they can bring destruction if you’re unlucky.

Now feels like a good time to mention them. In the UK (and I’m fairly sure this applies elsewhere), thunderstorms tend to happen as the weather transitions between seasons. Spring/summer and summer/autumn are when we usually get them here. Wet weather is hardly uncommon in the UK, but a proper, meaty storm takes matters up a notch, to something quite amazing. I’ve known the bedroom to completely light up, through dark curtains, during particularly violent outbursts of lightening. Sometimes, thunder has crackled so intensely that it’s drawn me out of a deep slumber.

What’s less common in the UK (well, it’s certainly less common for me personally) is fork lightening, like in the above photo. Fork lightening is gorgeous. It has a unique quality of beauty, but thanks to a lot of cloud, and how that cloud is arranged, it’s not often seen in the UK.

Back when I was a kid (cub?), my family and I had the misfortune of flying during a large, powerful storm. This came after a six-hour delay at a Portuguese airport, due to said storm, and whilst the storm had weakened, it was still enough to rock our plane around something fierce. To this day, that’s the one and only time I’ve been sick on a plane, but boy oh boy was I sick! On other occasions, ferocious storms have brought down fences and felled trees. Humanity might generally be trying to destroy the planet, but Mother Nature can still bite back, and storms of increasing power and danger can be expected if we do nothing to prevent climate change.