Seeing lightning
Lightning with no thunder is usually a storm too far away for its sound to reach you, often more than ten miles off. A silent flash on the horizon can turn your mind to other people's storms that you only see from a distance.
What it may mean
On a hot summer night you can sometimes watch a whole storm flicker along the horizon without hearing a thing, the kind of flash at which the Slavs once cried out that Perun was winking. The name heat lightning makes it sound special, yet it is ordinary lightning from a storm so distant that its rumble fades before it gets to you. From where you sit it looks peaceful, even pretty. Under it, the storm is loud and frightening. Distance does that to many things. A friend's hard season, a neighbor's family trouble: from afar, all you see is the occasional flash. Sympathy held at a distance rarely reaches anyone; a short message can.
Depending on how you saw it
A flash right overhead
When a flash and its thunder arrive together, the strike was very close, and the only sensible move is to get indoors and stay there for a while. Nothing about the moment calls for interpretation first. Which risk in your week deserves action first and reflection later?
Lightning glowing inside a cloud
Most lightning never touches the ground; it flashes inside or between clouds and lights them from within. You see the glow, not the bolt. What is going on inside someone close to you that shows only as a flicker on the outside?
Talking about it right away
Boys in old England held that mentioning the lightning right after a flash would get the seat of their trousers torn out. Some things are better watched in silence for a moment. What are you tempted to comment on at once that might be better observed first?
Why it happens in nature
Lightning is a huge electric spark inside a cloud or between a cloud and the ground, and it heats the air along its path to about five times the temperature of the sun's surface. The rumble of thunder fades with distance far sooner than the light does, so a storm beyond the horizon can flash without a sound.
What folk beliefs say
Slavic peoples
The Slavs thought that lightning could see: at a flash of summer lightning, gone before one could catch its gleam, they cried out that Perun was winking.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 956. View the page
England
Boys in England believed that if anyone spoke of the lightning just after a flash, the seat of their trousers would be torn out.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 956. View the page
Japan
The Japanese believed from very old times that lightning cannot strike anyone under a mosquito net.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 956. View the page
To reflect on
Whose storm have you only been watching from a distance, and how could you reach them?