Heat lightning?

I woke up in the middle of the night recently to lots of flashing lightning. I waited to hear thunder but there wasn't any. And it didn't ever rain either. I guess it was "heat lightning", which I have heard of but really never before been sure if it actually existed or was just an old-wives-tale kind of term people used.

After this I started to think it must really exist, because it had been a scorcher of a day before the night this lightning happened, and it certainly wasn't accompanied by any rain. But then I looked it up on Wikipedia (here) and learned that the term is indeed a misnomer. I'm not convinced, though. Wikipedia describes it as "faint flashes of lightning on the horizon", and there was nothing faint about this lightning. There probably was a storm in the area that just didn't strike the village directly (that happens fairly frequently, actually).

Anyway, I love lightning (I think it's beautiful), so I enjoyed the show for the few minutes I was up...then I went back to bed!