Lightning.. Nature's forked tongue

Recently here in Tas we have been having some extremely hot & humid weather. Temperatures have not been as extreme as the mainland but for Tassie temps up to 35 degrees (celcius) are tough to deal with here. Plus there has been very high humidity. It feels like the tropics have come south.

Last Friday, I watched from the back yard in Tullah an intense lightning storm slowly pass from west to east not that far north of Tullah. There was little rain in this storm cloud, just lots of amazing forked lightning flashing across and down, creating a spectacular light show for those in its view.
BUT.. with lightning in summer, there is the threat of lightning starting fires.

Now it is 5 days later and there is a fire burning near Cradle Mountain from this Lightning storm.
Tullah and the surrounding area has been blanketed in a haze of smoke, some of which I drove through this morning, and was quite thick in places. Visibility on the road would go from clear to near zero in seconds.

We curse these fires, but when nature is in total charge to where and when Lightning happens, and how it controls its Wilderness, how can we argue. It is a natural event, it has been happening this way for centuries, longer than Man can imagine.
Lightning is fascinating, and we must be ever aware of how powerful it is, what it can do, and what its purpose is in nature. To this day, we remain in awe of the amazing energy it gives us.