I was just gonna say!
I watched that one develop, August 1999.
Our living room window faced east, and for three or four minutes before the rain hit, there were hundreds of lighting bolts hitting out over the towns to our east and south; at one point, they were coming at the rate of many per second. I'm sure that more than a thousand were visible before the rain started, and they didn't stop then, they were just not directly visible.
Once the rain started, our living room window appeared to be looking out on a solid waterfall, much more intense than what you see going through a drive-through car wash.
Was that the one that hit at like 4 in the morning?
I had a friend whose kids were heading off to a religious retreat and they were up very early packing to head out. She saw the lightning in the west and said something to her husband and he said, *That’s lightning*. She was amazed.
It had been hot that day and we had all the windows open and a couple window fans going in the bedroom so never heard the storm building.
It woke us up when it literally SLAMMED into the house and shook the whole house. It was raining in all the windows from all four sides at once and the kids (who were little) woke up screaming, it scared them so bad.
The power went out almost instantly.
I remember the Labor Day one as well but my recollection was the Aug one was worse.