Lightning sound effect

The discharge landing on top of you, all front edge and no roll. This is the card most scenes want, because the split second of tearing air is the part an audience reads as lightning rather than thunder.

Thousands of tiny snaps running through air just before the main event. Lay it under the two seconds before a flash and the strike stops being a surprise and starts being inevitable.

The crack and the fifteen seconds of rolling that answers it. Most stock versions cut the tail short, and the tail is what tells an audience how much sky the storm covers.

The same discharge with its high edge gone and a faint echo behind it. Distance is a change of colour rather than a change of level, which is why simply turning a close strike down never convinces.

Two discharges a fraction of a second apart, the second drier than the first. The repeat reads as a storm actively working, where a single strike can read as a one-off.

Twenty seconds of low rumbling with cracks breaking through at uneven intervals. A whole scene can sit on it, and the unevenness is what stops the ear noticing where it starts.