London, England, August 7, 2008—Lightning strikes near a church in south London as a spectacular storm moved across the region, dropping heavy rain and hail stones the size of marbles.

One lightning bolt blew a six-foot-wide (1.8 meter) hole in the roof of an Ipswich home, the Evening Starreported.

Lightning storms are common in southern England during the humid summer months, though this one was "a stunning spectacle," the Met Office told the Daily Mirror.

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