A considerable number of mythological deities are said to throw thunderbolts - Zeus and Thor are merely the most familiar of these to Europeans, with examples known from many other cultures. Actual mythic creatures that throw lightning, however, are much less common, although Chinese dragons are at least associated with thunder and storms. In D&D, however, it seems an obvious attack mode once we've dealt with fire and ice, and, naturally enough, it's associated with the dragon that's the colour of the sky.1E
The original picture of the blue dragon shows an animal with a moderately long and heavy snout, large eyes, and elongated canine teeth. More distinctive features include the fact that the dorsal frill of the green and black dragons is here replaced with a series of large triangular plates, which may be projections from the vertebrae, but could be separate structures similar to those on a Stegosaurus. The latter possibility is supported by the existence of three similar plates on the forehead. In front of these, there is a row of four bony spikes, one of which is enlarged to form a narrow nasal horn. As usual, this doesn't look like it would be of much use in combat, at least compared to the teeth and claws, so it might be a display structure.
Other than that, we can't see much of the dragon's body, although the wings seem to be at least approximately bat-like and we can see that the spinal plates extend down to at least the mid-back, and probably further. There appear to be tufts of fur on the chin and elbows, but another mammalian-looking feature is the presence of long external ears - although these have a ribbed structure quite unlike those of true mammals.
The blue dragon is the second-most powerful of the chromatic dragons, inferior only to the fire-breathing reds. This gives it an intelligence rating that's just marginally above that of the average human, a hide as tough as steel plate, and a need for sleep that's pretty close to that of humans. Physically, a full-grown adult is about as tough as an Asian elephant, although at 42 feet (13 metres) it's obviously much larger, even allowing for a lot of that being the tail. Unlike most other chromatic dragons it's "lawful evil", although we're not given any indication of how that affects its behaviour.The 2E illustration shows some differences. The hair on the chin has gone, although not that on the elbows. The triangular spinal plates don't reach the head, which instead has a row of six bony spines, with, on this occasion, the proximal one (rather than one behind it) being the longest and forming the narrow pointed horn. The ears are elongated and seem to have a more mammalian structure to them, and the eyes are proportionately smaller. We can see now that the spinal plates run almost the tip of the tail, which is marked by an elongated blade-like structure - although it may not necessarily be solid or sharp, and could just be membranous.
Interestingly, considering that one of the few advantages of being blue would be camouflage against the clear desert skies, the underside of the animal turns out to be greenish - and this, of course, is the part of it that its potential prey would be able to see.
3E
The 3E blue dragon has lost most the spinal plates that were one of the most distinctive features of the earlier forms, although there are some narrower spiked plates on the neck and small projections down the spine further back - in this case, almost certainly arising directly from the vertebrae. The tail is massive and enclosed in a series of segmented armour plates; it clearly drags along the ground and must be a nuisance while flying, although it does look fairly muscular.
The head is shorter with a strongly prognathous jaw lacking true lips, and the creature has shorter, more reptilian, teeth than it had before. The fur on the chin and elbows has been replaced by a series of what are probably keratinous spines rather like thick porcupine quills. The nasal horn is much, much larger than before, more like that of rhinoceros. For once, it looks as if it would actually be of some use in combat, although it's not listed as an attack mode; perhaps they are used in intraspecies conflict rather than for attacking adventurers.
There are also many more spines on the rest of the head as well. These structures appear defensive, as might be seen on creatures such as horned lizards, but, of course, they have rather more to fear from mundane predators than a blue dragon would. The external ear has also changed in shape again, now being formed from a ribbed triangular membrane that rolls around at the upper and lower margin to form a partial funnel - which seems as good a way of focusing sound as any.
The blue dragon's intelligence has increased, but only to put it on a par with other larger chromatic dragons. Where over a third of blue dragon's couldn't even speak in 1E, the Draconomicon now gives them a hierarchical society that's rather more sophisticated than other chromatic dragons can manage. And, yes, like red dragons, adults are skilled enough with magic to cast the Lightning Bolt spell...
5E
As usual in 5E, the blue dragon's appearance doesn't change much from the previous two editions. The tail does look less cumbersome and heavily armoured, but this is one of those things one can put down to age and/or gender. Another feature retained from 3E is its ability to burrow through sand and to lie in wait for anything passing above. It's worth noting that not all (or even most) deserts have much loose sand, and even those that do probably don't have enough to effectively hide some of the older blues without the disturbance to things like dune structure being obvious from the surface.
The intelligence of blue dragons hasn't changed from 3E, although this is much higher than it was in 1E, putting them at the mid-rank for chromatic dragons. Their outstanding feature now appears to be their Wisdom stat, likely reflecting their great patience and willpower compared with their more short-tempered (and "chaotic") cousins.
Blue dragons are said to inhabit deserts and "other arid places". Depending on how arid we're talking about, this covers a moderate range of different habitats, even assuming that we're ignoring polar ice caps which technically, would count, but clearly aren't what's intended. What such habitats share is a lack of thick vegetation, although dry steppelands can have high grass which comes close. But even these, along with true deserts and marginal semi-desert habitats, are ideal for aerial hunters due to the lack of a tree canopy. Particularly rugged badlands might provide more shelter and hiding places for potential prey, but even those are unlikely to be a major problem for dragons. And the hot deserts that seem to be preferred have the additional advantage of warm thermals to aid soaring flight.
The downside, of course, is that there's also comparatively little food. True deserts, in particular, have relatively little large animal life. Camels, for instance, are native to desert habitats, but they eat grass and thorny shrubs, so while the wild ones may tolerate wide patches of sand, it isn't where they naturally spend much of their time. (There are very few wild camels left in our world, but, obviously, this wasn't always so).
This difficulty in acquiring food is mentioned in most descriptions of blue dragons from 2E onwards. It's said that blue dragons are almost always hungry, as well they might be, which affects their disposition. It's worth noting, however, that white dragons will face the same issue if they don't live near the coast since animal life is even harder to come by on inland icecaps than it is in hot deserts. But, hungry or not, blue dragons clearly do find enough food to eat and grow, especially since they are the second-largest of the chromatic dragons. True, like other dragons, they grow slowly, but once they get even close to adulthood they're going to require more food than even the great size of their territory is likely to provide. The explanation, presumably, is magical in nature, with dragons being able to extract nutrition from their food in ways that ignore the laws of chemistry in much the same way that their flight ignores the laws of physics.
And, honestly, they're probably not alone among D&D monsters in doing this, since quite a lot of them are large and inhabit places where food would logically be scarce.
But, if we're talking about physics being an optional extra for dragons, there's the matter of the blue dragon's breath weapon. Arguably even more than the white dragon's freezing cold this is the hardest of the classic D&D draconic attacks to explain in real-world terms.
It's not that real-world animals don't use electricity to attack, since both electric eels and torpedo rays do exactly this. They generate a powerful electric voltage using modified muscle cells and this is strong enough to stun prey or at least shock and repel something coming to eat them. But this works because the animal is underwater and certainly isn't any kind of "lightning bolt".
The exact details of how a thundercloud generates a lightning bolt aren't entirely clear even today. But, in general terms, they generate electric fields which, in turn, create a potential difference between the charge in the cloud and that on the ground, leading to what's essentially a really big spark. Thus our dragon also needs to create a particularly impressive electric charge and one that's likely well beyond the abilities of an electric eel.
For comparison, the most impressive electric eels can generate a shock of about 600 volts (and this is because they're underwater; it would be harder to generate that voltage in air). A natural lightning strike is around 300 million volts - so 500,000 times stronger. And, at least for full-grown blue dragons, that's likely the sort of power we're talking about.
Electric eels, incidentally, probably avoid hurting themselves when they discharge by the simple fact that they're a lot bigger than the things they're stunning. This is probably fair enough at the voltage and very low current they're producing, but blue dragons are going to need some serious internal insulation to avoid electrocuting themselves simply by generating the required charge.
A bit of a stretch, then. But, even assuming the dragon could do this by, say, having a powerful battery and a Tesla coil in its throat, there's the question of how useful it would be. The problem here is likely to be aiming it at particular targets, rather than having it just discharge through the nearest projecting structure. (Which, admittedly, could well be a tall metal-armoured fighter, but it might not be, and anyway, sometimes you want to zap the halfling spellcaster). And once it has discharged through the unfortunate victim, that's it; a single lightning bolt isn't really going to go in a straight line for 90 feet (27 metres) and simultaneously strike everything standing in that line. It's going to earth itself in the first object it hits, and possibly in the earth itself if the first object isn't all that close and both dragon and target are standing on the ground.
Mythical gods could throw thunderbolts. Blue dragons, and any wizard with the lightning bolt spell, are more akin to them than to anything that could really exist.
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