It's amazingly calm and mild in Boise this morning, with only a few puddles testifying to last night's wild weather - massive amounts of lightning, hard, soaking rains, and whipping wind gusts. We lost power at 10 p.m., which meant TV and computer were silenced in favor of watching the incredible lightning show by candlelight for the next hour and a half. The Boise Police reported two lightning-caused fires totaling 12 acres. "At about 11 p.m., as firefighters had the fires both under control, fire crews had to retreat to their vehicles for their own safety as another very active storm cell brought numerous lightning strikes to the area," reports BPD spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. "Fortunately the storm also brought moderate to heavy rainfall. Crews were clearing from both fires by midnight."

The Idaho Statesman reported that a Garden City man was struck by lightning while standing in the front doorway of his home, touching a metal screen door frame; he was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Valerie Mills, a meteorologist and senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Boise, said there were about 50 lightning strikes recorded in Ada County, the fifth-most in the last 10 years. "So yeah, it was a big night," she said. The violent storm was kicked off by Boise's first really hot day of the year, which wasn't a record but hit 95 degrees. "We had warming below, and cooling aloft," Mills said. "We also had moisture. That added instability, and the moisture that we had was just the ingredient that was needed to trigger those thunderstorms." It wasn't the typical Idaho rainstorm - a few drops, a lot of wind, and it's over. Instead, the whopper of a storm was enough to clear out worsening air quality, water everyone's lawns and put on a big light show. "It was quite a day for Ada County, in fact other areas around too, in southeastern Oregon and Southwest Idaho," Mills said.