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This is the summer of wild lightning in Montauk.

Not in years has the town absorbed so many bolts on an almost daily basis.

Many of the storms have come through at night, from about 9 o’clock until just after sunrise, so that people have taken comfort in their snug beds but they stay awake to see the black sky flash bright with electric light and hear the rumble in the distance and the ear-splitting cracks of nearby strikes.

By rough estimate there have been more than 1,000 lightning bolts loosed within a seven mile radius of Montauk since the first of the seasonal electrical storms came through in late May. East Hampton police say there have been no people reported hit by lightning in Montauk so far this year, but there have been golf club stories of near misses, and an unwitting computer or two has been lobotomized by a power surge from a close-by hit.

There are prime locations in Montauk from which to watch storms approach and engulf the town. The best is the parking lot on the inlet back of Gosman’s.

Looking northwest toward the Connecticut shore from the Gosman’s back parking lot.

The mountainous charcoal thunderheads boil across the waters of Long Island Sound from Connecticut. Montaukers are habitual watchers of weather radar and when a big yellow and red maybe even purple Doppler-spotted storm cell is headed Montauk’s way, the true storm watchers appear as if summoned by witchcraft. They gaze on in wonder from the shelter of their cars and trucks. When the squall line comes straight down from north rather than sidewise from the west, the veterans know to expect brilliant fireworks and roof-rattling rains. Mother Nature seldom disappoints them.

Weather patterns for the next week or two indicate that the dry spell is over and the scattered, sometimes severe thunder-bumpers will be rolling through every day. Some sun worshippers are annoyed but the lovers and the flowers are not.