Silent lightning storm gives impressive display over North Sea

An impressive lightning storm silently flashed over the North Sea in the early hours of Friday morning.

The storm, which happened at about 4am, took place around 50 miles off the east Norfolk coast but could be seen as far away as Ely - over 80 miles away.

Mark Taylor captured some of the footage:

The base of the storm was about 5,000 feet up, and this, combined with a strong southwesterly wind, meant that the storm was silent and all that could be seen was an impressive display of flashing lights.

Here is a view of the thousands of lightning strikes that occurred. The data is from blitzung.org:

Nicholas Davey also captured some of the flashes

Kevin Dack was also up in the early hours and captured this at 4am in Tavernham.