Tell me any part of the country where it wouldn't be news to have months of essentially no rain, followed by 1200 lightning strikes, still with very little rain.

The issue isn't simply the lightning (that would be rare in the Bay area). It is the lightning combined with drought conditions making wildfires a major issue.

Alot of the eastern edge of the rockies meet this criteria. Take a look at the string of hotspots between Denver and the southern border. Those are mostly in desert climates where it isnt terribly unusual to go without rain. As you would expect, fires are a major problem there as well.

https://ecle.biz/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/avg_sd_2005-2014...

You are right.

The population density is probably lower though.

I really hope the fires don’t get too bad. I was unaware of the drought conditions.

I remember at the end of 2016 in the southeast where I am, we were in the midst of a severe, multi-year drought. Wildfires started popping up everywhere, causing lots of damage/ deaths.

It was very strange, the atmosphere was ‘foggy’ from the smoke for weeks. Praying for rain!

Heh. Your idea of a "severe, multi-year drought" is California's idea of "string of unusually wet years".

It is all a question of perspective.

(And what we call drought, well...)

Not to mention weather so hot it caused the first state-wide emergency rolling blackouts in 19 years.

It was not any hotter than it gets most years. What has changed is probably that California's ability to govern itself has declined to such an extent that it cannot consistently keep the electricity flowing.

> As of 4:30 p.m., at least five cities had logged record highs, according to the weather service. Among the hottest of those spots was San Jose, which saw a high of 101, breaking last year’s mark of 98.

> Temperatures soared to 98 degrees in Oakland, breaking last year’s mark of 90; 96 degrees in Salinas, breaking the 1984 mark of 84; 96 degrees in Richmond, breaking last year’s mark of 90 degrees; and 95 degrees in downtown San Francisco, breaking the 1995 mark of 86.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/14/bay-area-heat-wave-ar...

Isn't that the weather pattern of northern Australia? The Dry, then lightning storms, then eventually lots of rain and floodings.

There was lightning and thunder (and hail depending on where you were) in the last year and even big summer across the sky lightning events like this in the last 5-7 [actually 8]years (I was on an airplane landing at SFO for it). It's just not common, and 100+ temperatures aren't common so together it's pretty weird. If it was the US central plains, it would be Tuesday during every summer month.

[Edit It was 2012:]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightnin...

We are in the middle of a 110 degree heat wave which was briefly interrupted by a series of lightning storms and rain.

I think it was the unpredictable turns in weather.

100% agree. In many other places in the world this would be just Sunday.

HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes

> HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes

Given that 21% of global VC money is pumped into the Bay Area[1], that seems like a pretty natural thing.

[1] - (Through 2017 though): https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-the-geography-of-startups-and-in...

A good reminder that technology opinions here too only represent the tip of the iceberg of the software engineering world and hardly are representative of the industry at large.