An all-night light show with hundreds of lightning strikes from the Pacific Coast to the Sierra Nevada kept folks awake and knocked out power to thousands as thunderstorms rumbled through Northern California.

"It was kinda active last night," said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Smith with a bit of understatement.

In Davis and Marysville, where thousands lost power, electricity was restored to most customers by noon, said a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric. In all, 23,000 PG&E customers lost power.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District reports 12 locations with power failures affecting just 71 customers. Locations hit by outages include Sacramento, Antelope, Carmichael, West Sacramento and Elk Grove.

Even a veteran weather watcher and former Midswesterner was impressed with the lightning.

Citrus Heights resident Joe Cronin, who retired from the National Weather Service in Sacramento in 1993, worked for many years as a government meteorologist in Green Bay, Wis. He's seen his share of thunderstorms here and in Wisconsin -- but last night was something to behold.

"It was the most impressive display of lightning I have ever seen," Cronin said. "That storm was unique -- just so much lightning. Vivid displays. It was so extended. A lot of time in the Midwest you will have a cold frontal passage with good, strong thunderstorms with it. But they move through. There was more lightning last night than I have ever seen before."

Meteorologist Smith said the storm was unique in that there were thunderstorms over such a large area.

The storm dropped nearly an inch of rain in downtown Sacramento and other spots, perhaps preventing so-called dry lightning forest fires in the mountains.

"It certainly was not dry," said Smith. "Most of the storms contained a lot of rainfall. We got reports where they were getting a half an inch of rain in 15 minutes and over an inch of rain at times," Smith said. "We had .47 of an inch of rain since midnight in Sacramento."

The thunderstorms came in waves, spawned by a large low pressure system off the coast.

The low is still triggering thunderstorms that are expected to continue through today and Friday.

"The storms were unique in the frequency of the lightning," said Smith. "People who had not lived in other parts of the country might never have seen the continuous lightning that we saw last night. There were periods when we didn't have a break between lightning flashes. That's pretty unusual for here."

The thunderstorms, while bringing good rainfall, didn't linger. There were few reports of flooded roadways.

"They hit hard and move on," said Smith.

He said there is no way to exactly predict when the thunderstorms will come through but it is likely that more will occur in Northern California through today.

"A lot of these disturbances you can't even see on satellite until they come over land and produce thunderstorms," said Smith.

While humans and some dogs and cats perked up their ears with the thunderous onslaught that hit Northern California, the half dozen pooches who stayed overnight at Cha Cha's Doggie Daycare in East Sacramento took it all in stride.

Victoria Cox, office manager, monitored the canines on a 24-hour doggiecam from her house.

"Nobody was stressed out," she said. "I was double checking to make sure, because if anybody was stressed we would come back and take care of them. They have their blankets and their bones. They slept well."

She had left the radio on a little higher at Cha Cha's to drown out the thunder claps.

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Call The Bee's Bill Lindelof, (916) 321-1079.