Mass. Weather: Dangerous lightning, wind gusts expected during Thunderstorm Friday [Video]

Grab your umbrella, because after a sunny and mostly clear, warm June week, beginning of the weekend storms are expected across Massachusetts.

A Hazardous Weather Outlook warns of damaging wind gusts, hail and heavy downpours for northwestern Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, east central New York, eastern New York and southern Vermont for Friday.

The National Weather Service also predicts dangerous cloud-to-ground lightning, which is invisible to the human eye, and shoots to the ground “in less time than it takes to blink,” according to the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory.

The cloud-to-ground lightning could include what is called a “bolt from the blue.” This type of lightening can come out of the side of a thunderstorm cloud and travel a “large distance” away from the storm cloud before striking the ground, according to the NOAA.

“These lightning flashes have been documented to travel several miles away from the thunderstorm cloud,” the NOAA wrote. “They can be especially dangerous because …