Tim Bray informs us about the oddities you encounter, when googling Elephant Lightning. Of particular interest is the biblical plague angle. Reading the story reminds me of when I was a student in Canada, in Waterloo, Ontario, and had some magnificent rainstorm experiences. This led my flatmate Joe to look through the excellent library at UW. I can almost remember one phrase from the uniquely odd book he picked up on weather phenomena: Only in Norway has there been reports of a rain of rats. Or words to that effect. Entire sections of the book formed an odd collection of samples of the amazing things thunderstorms have been known to pick up (much like this) and all of these crazy stories were listed in the book as pure science, next to an account on the theory of thunder and tornados.