Toronto lightning storm 2011! Although the most powerful winds and hail were felt elsewhere, as the photos below illustrate, we got one hell of a light show. At times the strikes and flashes were so frequent that the sky was illuminated for seconds at a time, and at the height of the storm there were scant spaces between each bolt. Oh, those earth shattering thunder claps didn't hurt the mood either.

It was the CN Tower that really took centre stage, though. Some reports counted more than 25 lightning strikes over the course of the thunderstorm, which hit the city in earnest just before 10 p.m. yesterday. So while there was no Toronto tornado — in spite of a brief frenzy on Twitter — what at one point appeared to be another near miss turned out to be one of the more exciting weather events of the summer.

Here's the first round of photos from the blogTO Flickr pool. As more come in, we'll continue to update the post. Lead shot by Jonathan Ponce.

Update (8:00 a.m.)

Here is an awesome video sequence of the storm:

Lightning TO from Jon Simonassi on Vimeo.

PHOTOS

Photo by picturenarrative

Photo by Mike Tan

picturenarrative

Photo by AttilaA2011

Photo by Dave Han

Dave Han

Photo by ZensLens

Photo by Hamish Grant

ZensLens

Photo by Richard Gottardo

Richard Gottardo

Photo by guitarchitect

Photo by Liam Kearney

Photo by dylancook

Photo by Scott Wilton

Photo by vladTO

Photo by *Imperialis*

Update (more photos):

Photo by JPanda2009

Photo by MustGoFaster

Photo Roozbeh Rokni

Photo by David G. Tran

David G. Tran

Photo by Cobby17

MORE VIDEOs

This is NOT on repeat! Video by Kris Anthony Photography

Power!

A pretty good indication of the frequency and intensity of the lightning.

Video by SteveCarty

The reaction is priceless...