I would say you saw the lightning about 5 seconds later with an instantaneous flash and boom. When you went back outside was the fresh smelling air just ionized.
Years ago in my corp golf league, a bad storm came out of nowhere. The course just rang the bell to get your ass off but no chance. Some storms are also driven electrostatically as well, not just wind. These are very fast. This storm progressed rapidly to a light show and light rain.
My foursome of course went under a tree and I wanted to go lay down in a deep sand trap, we were already wet but nooo they laughed at me.
Don't recall how long we stood there, but all of a sudden we looked like we were holding one of those magic electric globes at the children's museum. I yelled something like "we're all gonna die!" at the same time a tree directly across the fairway from us exploded with another foursome over there. It's annealed in my mind because we watched them all fall over in slow motion.
We were maybe the second group to get there, I don't know but all four of them were smoking from different parts and groaning but all made it out without too much damage. Some holes in their feet, elbows and one guy had a toasted ear kind of.
Another had his golf club he was holding blown out to the fairway and the rubber grip hardened like burnt glass. The other co-worker said he was almost sure he knew he arched to the other guy. I was fascinated by their experiences.
Up to the time I retired, one guy swears his hair started growing back. He actually had better than peach fuzz on his prior completely bald head. But no way of knowing the guy wasn't using tonics for that.
The smells were bizarre and strong ionization smell and feeling too. But from my experience and others, usually you don't have much time to feel the build up. Sometimes none.
