There is the phenomenon of qualia and then there is the ontological extension. The word does not refer to the ontological extension.

My basic claim is that the way that people use the word qualia implicitly implies the ontological extensions. By using the term, you are either smuggling these extensions in, or you are using the term in a way that no philosopher uses it. Here are some intuitions:

Qualia are private entities which occur to us and can't be inspected via third person science.

Qualia are ineffable; you can't explain them using a sufficiently complex English or mathematical sentence.

Qualia are intrinstic; you can't construct a quale if you had the right set of particles.

etc.

Now, that's not to say that you can't define qualia in such a way that these ontological extensions are avoided. But why do so? If you are simply re-defining the phenomenon, then you have not explained anything. The intuitions above still remain, and there is something still unexplained: namely, why people think that there are entities with the above properties.

That's why I think that instead, the illusionist approach is the correct one. Let me quote Keith Frankish, who I think does a good job explaining this point of view,

Suppose we encounter something that seems anomalous, in the sense of being radically inexplicable within our established scientific worldview. Psychokinesis is an example. We would have, broadly speaking, three options.

First, we could accept that the phenomenon is real and explore the implications of its existence, proposing major revisions or extensions to our science, perhaps amounting to a paradigm shift. In the case of psychokinesis, we might posit previously unknown psychic forces and embark on a major revision of physics to accommodate them.

Second, we could argue that, although the phenomenon is real, it is not in fact anomalous and can be explained within current science. Thus, we would accept that people really can move things with their unaided minds but argue that this ability depends on known forces, such as electromagnetism.

Third, we could argue that the phenomenon is illusory and set about investigating how the illusion is produced. Thus, we might argue that people who seem to have psychokinetic powers are employing some trick to make it seem as if they are mentally influencing objects.

In the case of lightning, I think that the first approach would be correct, since lightning forms a valid physical category under which we can cast our scientific predictions of the world. In the case of the orbit of Uranus, the second approach is correct, since it was adequately explained by appealing to understood Newtonian physics. However, the third approach is most apt for bizarre phenomena that seem at first glance to be entirely incompatible with our physics. And qualia certainly fit the bill in that respect.