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Set up giant lightning rods in lightning-prone areas with cabling that extends deep underground to chambers filled with water. Use the resulting steam to power turbines. Presto!

Unfortunately, at the moment, that idea really isn't possible. From http://www.lightningstorm.com/tux/jsp/faq/index.js p

Capturing the energy of lightning is intriguing, but not yet feasible for several reasons. First, no one knows exactly where to collect lightning as it does not naturally strike specific places more than a few times a year. Next, conventional storage devices for electricity--like a battery--do not accommodate the magnitude and duration of a powerful flash that lasts only fractions of a second. Finally, about half of the energy of a lightning strike dissipates into light, acoustic energy, and electromagnetic waves. There are ongoing studies to explore the use of laser beams to control lightning. It appears possible that a laser beam can be sent into a cloud that's about ready to generate lightning to "trigger" lightning--and possibly collect its energy in an appropriate storage device.

Still, I guess generating steam to turn turbines isn't the same as trying to store it in some kind of battery or something, but I'd guess the energy is too concentrated, or too much is lost to produce steam--plus, the other two issues they mention.

Yes, but the earth's field is static. The magnetic pulse from the railgun will be dynamic, meaning that it changes very rapidly over time, and thus one can use really high AC gain and low DC gain on your front-end. If you put up a big loop antenna, you WILL see the signature from this thing from much further than 100 m. Lightning strokes are detected this way; the NLDN uses only about 100 stations to detect lightning all over the US.

Anywho... no interesting stories here, but there's a neat lightning map here. It shows all of the lightning strikes in the nation for the last three hours. Also, if anyone has a "weatherspeak" dictionary, that'd be great. I do a decent job of interpreting NWS forecasts, but crazy stuff like:

A PLETHORA OF SFC AND UPPER LEVEL FEATURES BEGINNING TO SPAWN
DEEP MOIST CONVECTION IN NRN IA, WILL EVOLVE INTO A MCS LATER
TONIGHT AND LIKELY MOVE INTO THE NRN PORTIONS OF THE CWA.
CONCURRENTLY...

For a bit of fun, you can check out the National Lightning Detection Network, which shows recent lightning strikes in the USA over the last few hours.

Remember, than electromagnetic radiation travels with the speed of light! The time it takes for the electromagnetic signal from a lightning strike 10 km away to travel to the receiver is only 33 micro seconds. if you use the sonic signal, however, you would be able to do the triangulation fairly easily with relatively cheap watches. Your only concern would be that you and your friends should be certain that you measure the arrival time for the same lightning strike.

sPh

Tell me this isn't cool...

This free 'lightning explorer' shows the most recent strikes in the U.S.

I don't think this one is as impressive.

Yeah, I know it's sort of egocentric for we Americans, but you can visit http://www.lightningstorm.com/ls2/gpg/lex1/mapdisp lay_free.jsp?jrunsessionid=1007697160371304360 to see recent lightening activity in the continental US. When things are lively, you can see a lot of really nifty patterns with the fronts.

I like this page better for lightning, its map is always up.

I came home once to find that my sister had plugged her surge protector into yet another surge protector, I loved it. Just an idea. I don't think it will do anything, I just got a kick out of it.