September early morning thunderstorm with robins singing

Please go to the new version of this, at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/817001/ , which has much clearer and more solid stereo imaging.
A full thunderstorm, with some earth strikes, though not coming frighteningly close, with robins singing at times. This is a pretty active storm, with a long approach period — about 25 minutes before starting to sound at all close, but then the lightning activity rapidly slackens off, though still with the odd now more distant rumbles. Noticeable rain doesn't come on till the relatively close lightnings have passed.

Thunderstorms are quite a rarity in Exeter, so for me each such storm is a very special event.

This recording was made on very early morning of 19 September 2014, from my bedroom window in city centre, Exeter, Devon, UK.

For some reason I'd neglected to set up the recorder at bedtime as I normally would when thunderstorms in the area were at all likely, so, about 4.45 a.m. I awoke to the sound of what I took at first to be a very distant high-altitude jet aeroplane, and then suddenly realized what it was, and duly expleted, amusedly cross with myself for not having the recorder already running, then hurriedly set it up. My saving grace this time was the very long approach time of this storm, so if I hadn't said anything about the matter it would seem that I'd captured the storm pretty well from its very first audible murmurs.

Advisory:
To hear this to best effect you need high-grade headphones, and to have the volume setting about 9dB above a sensible normal level for a realistic rendition of symphonic orchestral music. To clarify, you need the volume set so that, in the opening, the background sound, with almost inaudible thunder murmurs, is clearly, but only just, audible — hoping that makes sense!

Thundery sky at sunrise time, on 10 October 2013, as part of the view from my bedroom window, from where I made this recording

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective version), and it was placed on a Hama Mini tripod (very small) raised up on some books (BAD idea, as I was later to find out the hard way!!) on my bedroom window sill, with the window as wide open as it would go.

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, and to compensate for 'alcove resonance' in the bass, and much more recently it's had stereo widening / sharpening processing to 200% width with A1 Stereo Control VST plugin, then a 7dB EQ tilt away from the treble (straight line from no change at 100Hz to -7dB at 8K) to compensate for the treble overemphasis caused by the stereo widening.

Later note: that 200% widening was a fair bit too much, and would have weakened the central part of the soundstage. I worked out much later that the most solid and clear soundstage from the M-10 is achieved with about 160% widening.

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