It's scary how far out in front of a storm you can see lightning strikes sometimes. I was at a horse farm in Chesapeake City, MD once, on a beautiful, sunny day, when I heard the loudest BANG I've ever heard in my life. It was so loud my first thought was it was a stray shell from Aberdeen Proving Grounds. They're about 15 miles away, and you'd occasionally hear distant booms from there. Scared the hell out of everybody, including the horses. The owner of the farm was outside at the time, and she heard a buzzing sound traveling around their electric fence just before it hit. Turns out a transformer a couple hundred yards away had been hit by lightning, apparently a ground-to-air strike. Within about a half hour it went from sunny skies to a thunderstorm with heavy rains, hail, and lots of lightning, but I know that storm had to be at least 10 miles away when that strike happened.