when a thunderstorm occurs ...

In the 6 years that I spent in the Boston area, I heard only ONE clap of thunder. News reports confirmed it as being the only such incidence in several years.

Most of the "natives" fled to the street to look for the explosion that they were sure must have occurred. (A few asked if there were still molasses tanks in the area.)

Thunder is sufficiently rare in the northwest that a visiting native from Seattle was so enchanted by the almost continuous spring thunderstorms in Kansas that she asked us to try to record some so she could listen to them back home.

Although there are "peak seasons" here in Kansas, it's rare for a month to pass without at least one or two audible rumbles, although most folks here don't much notice anything that you don't feel - unless you still "see" the lightning stroke (eyeball remanence) when the rumble starts, in which case you run like h***.

In a crowd here, when there's heavy (thunderstorm) weather about, you can pick out the people gaping blankly with their lips moving. They're counting off the seconds between the flash and the rumble to keep track of how far off the lightning is, to decide whether to move to shelter. I'm not sure they teach "the countdown" in schools, even here; but all the old farmers I've known taught it to the kids.

John