Sometimes a lightning strike occurs at the exact moment of login. The lightning seems to stay in some sort of queue until someone logs into the server.
Multiple users on my server have reported this issue. They will hear thunder at login. The lightning then creates fire which spreads out because the thunderstorm (rain) is over.
There also seems to be too many lightning strikes during a thunderstorm.
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This bit me yesterday - at least 3 strikes within 50 blocks, setting a large part of a village on fire. I've had the thunder on login but not noticed the lightning for whatever reason.
I have experienced this same behavior on the server I admin, although the target of the lightning appears to be a specific player (not me). I've checked the terrain of other players' bases, and it seems to be just the one player affected. I had three logins in a row accompanied by a thunderclap, and in each case I can verify that there were spontaneous fires at the specific player's base which suggest multiple lightning strikes. I'm running a vanilla Minecraft server 1.14.2 (no mods).