One of winter’s consolations is the break from the destructive phenomenon of thunderstorms. Snow costs and is hazardous, but I don’t recall reporting on any snowstorms that electrocuted people or set buildings on fire — unless by a heat source being used in an outage.

That’s why thunder snow, aka a winter thunderstorm, is unfair. Instead of taking the good, a lack of lightning, with the bad of slippery walking and driving, we must take the bad with the bad. If lightning hits me, I would have at least liked to have been enjoying a summer day until then.

Lightning is an impressive show of nature’s force, and if people weren’t carelessly or criminally setting forests on fire as seems to happen a lot out west, then I could say lightning is doing nature’s recycling, to make way for new growth; but overall it poses harm, and that mars its beauty.

I like the occasional rain that’s needed; other than that, give me 60 F,  an all-blue sky and minimal wind. Soon, hopefully. And a tick-free world.