re: Where did the false concept of “heat lightning” come from?

I don’t think anyone was dumb.. they didn’t know what they didn’t know. It comes from those hot summer nights when there are popup thunderstorms. They would see lightning flashes from off in the distance and couldn’t see or didn’t know there was a thunderstorm that far off. Not dumb at all..

We can pull up a radar and see where storms are relative to our location, they couldn’t. How would you explain lightning flashes on a clear summer night when you didn’t see a thunderstorm in sight, smart guy?