Lightning Bolts do not appear if they are more than 95 blocks away from the player.

Lightning Bolts do not appear if they are more than 64 blocks away from the player. This makes it so in order to see the actual lightning bolt you must be close to it. I have seen lightning bolts strike further away then this in previous versions with it still rendering.

UPDATE: In 15w35b (and possibly 15w35a, I haven't checked that version) the distance seems to have been increased to about 95 blocks.

Recreate this by using this command:
/summon LightningBolt ~65 ~ ~
and look in the positive X direction.

Or if you are running 15w35b or higher:
/summon LightningBolt ~96 ~ ~

The image below shows this working correctly in version 1.6.4