THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1928, Page 9

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

PEOPLE ALARMED LAST NIGHT A BOY’S IMAGINATION. The electric thunderstorm last evening was one of the most unusual visitations experienced in Auckland. The thunder claps sounded in series like volleys from big guns close at hand. Houses in all parvt. or the district visibly shook and the reverberation was followed by very luminous lightning which, at times, looked like flares, coming from the lowlying clouds. Although it is held that there is only a million to one chance of a house being struck by lightning, the spectacle last evening for one fifteenminute period at least, must have given people who left their beds some misgivings. One chain display, following several sheet-like effects, seemed to have its origin in a bomb-like burst from the top of nimbus cloud, and its zig-zag course earthwards was most realistic.

In a city home a ten-ytar-old boy, awakened from slumber by the thunder and scared by vivid lightning reflecting upon his face from the window, rushed into his parents’ room with the alarm, “The Germans are here, dud. They’re dropping bombs. Quick! Listen!” The lad had not forgotten the thrilling taels of the bombing of London told by his father upon return from the Great War. Needless to say, there was no sleep in that house until the atmospheric disturbance ceased when a devoted mother also had her say about the additional bad effect of war pictures upon young minds. “It’s just your stories and these films that make these kiddies so nervy,” was her pointed observation to the exDigger as he settled down to complete an interrupted rest, probably cogitating seriously, for the first time, just how war activity influenced the generation.