dudes, last lightning storm I went outside and sat high up on a hill - lol . . . Seriously it was a huge storm too, striking all over the place.
The funny thing is I live in a town that is I think among the highest elevation in Mass, and I live in one of the highest parts of the town...
Lightning actually struck a tree in our yard a few years back, it BLEW THE FUCK up (I mean shattered) the tree, scattering pieces of wood all over our neighborhood and our lawn. Not to mention sent a a wave of dirt covering our house. the lightning traveled along the tree roots, carving out a 3 ft deep ditch, 5 feet wide... where it promptly hit the side of our house, exploding our water heater and setting our house on fire. We had five fire engines at our place. When the tree shattered a piece of wood split open our dining room wall, and we had to get the whole wall replaced. We had some lightning insurance inspectors (and some random people doing surveying and stuff) come out to our house and they all said they hadn't seen anything like that in 30 years.
So yeah I sat outside on our hill during a major lighting storm recently . . .