Thanks for the nice comments and the crits, maybe its almost "there"?

About the textures turning at certain angles with the camera: I was hoping this
wasnt a noticable problem. There is a solution for it , but it is very code
intensive and in this case would hurt the frame rate, so I left it out. In this
demo, there are about 50 clouds of random proportions at any given time, but
the effect on fps seems to be very minimal on my two machines. I still search
for an easier solution to overcome gimbal lock.

The lightning is the biggest frame killer. Each bolt has an average of 2200
particles that live over two frames. Last night I made a new bolt with which
the branches sometimes have sub branches, but I am not sure it is really
visually noticable during a flash, or worth the extra ~500 particles.

Any critique on the rain effect?

Also, I am very curious about what anyone else is getting as far as frame rate
with this second demo. Is it really slow for anyone? (BTW, It auto adjusts
itself to the current desktop resolution).

Thanks!