much of these storms were only accompanied with dry lightning and produced little to no rain, making conditions very favorable for wildfires to spark and spread rapidly. Early morning on August 16, when the first thunderstorms hit, around 2,500 lightning strikes hit the Bay Area, with 200 strikes happening in 30 minutes at one point, which the National Weather Service office in Bay Area labelled as "insane". Within the next 72–96 hours, over 12,000 lightning strikes were recorded over Northern California. These lightning strikes sparked up to 585 wildfires, many of which grew to be very large at a rapid pace due to parched brush, especially in Northern California. A second wave of thunderstorms was forecasted to hit on August 23 and 24; however, they failed to materialize over the Bay Area, which has been most impacted by these fires, and instead just produced light rain and a few lightning strikes over the Sierra Nevada, barely having any impact. Fires Many of the fires were started or discovered on August 16 or 17: CZU Lightning Complex By August 20, the fire had caused extensive damage to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The towns of Pescadero and La Honda were threatened by flames. LNU Lightning Complex The LNU Lighting Complex was a complex of 7 different fires in the Sonoma, Lake, and Napa counties, with 4 major ones being the Hennessey, Gamble, 15-10, and 13-4 Fires. It first sparked around 6:37 AM on August 17, when a lightning storm passed over the Lake Hennessey area. Another lightning strike occurred at 6:39, near the Aonair winery, starting a fire that was 5 acres large. About 60 fires had sparked in the region during that time period, however, while some blazes were quickly contained at 1 or 2 acres, others rapidly went out of control. Around 9 AM, dry, gale-force winds between 20 and 40 miles per hour helped to fan the flames of two uncontrolled blazes, the Gamble Fire and the Hennessey Fire. This caused the Hennessey Fire to explode to by 5 PM August 17, prompting several evacuations. By the night of August 18, the LNU complex had burned a total of so far with no containment. 3 structures were destroyed, and the two biggest fires, the Hennessey and the Gamble Fires, both expanded to . On August 19, the fire raced fast towards Vacaville, and caused hundreds of evacuations.