If you're like me, I pity you, but at least you understand the part excitement, part anticipation felt when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking you've heard a rumble. You wait, ears pricked, for a minute or so, convince yourself it must have been a car driving past, relax, and drift back to sleep.

Another minute later it happens again. The uncertainty remains, but it couldn't have been another car, right? You hear the sound again, but now you're paying attention. Except, damn it, it's so soft that you still can't be sure it's thunder. Your eyes are wide open and intensely focused on the window for that signature white flash to confirm your suspicions. But it doesn't happen. But there goes that sound again!

It took a good five minutes to finally be convinced that the sound was indeed thunder and that it was actually getting closer. Experience has told me that if you are woken by thunder from an oncoming storm, you don't have much time to get ready before the thing is on you.

It was almost midnight on Sunday night and I was desperate for a radar image to know what I was dealing with so I waited for the computer to boot:

Radar at 11:54pm

Pretty scrappy, but after seeing a ripper cloud-to-cloud bolt from the back yard, I headed off to a local spot for a better view.

Despite the regular rumbles of thunder to get me out of bed, there was very little subsequent lightning, and I unfortunately spent the next hour thus:

I returned home and hit the hay. Patchy rain continued throughout the night and the heaviest falls probably occured around 4:40am:

Radar at 4:40am

The lightning's resistance to my camera was disappointing, but getting woken by thunder in the middle of the night is always exciting.