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Posted on Fri, Feb. 27, 2004
Flakes fall with bizarre lightning, thunder
Thunder and lightning rarely accompany snow; they call it thundersnow
DAVID PERLMUTT
Staff Writer
Don Baker slept in Thursday morning, expecting the forecasts for snow to deliver him the day off from his carpenter's job.
He was awakened by thunder.
"They got it wrong again," was his first thought as Baker of Charlotte pulled himself out of bed and started for a shower. "It was supposed to snow, but we get a thunderstorm."
Then he looked out his bedroom window.
"It was white -- everywhere," he said. "My apologies to the weather man. I thought I was dreaming. It just seemed so out of place."
Baker wasn't dreaming. He'd experienced convective snow, or more generically, a thundersnow. One Charlottean referred to it as a "snunderstorm" -- a rare occurrence in these parts but not unheard of. Typically, thunder is associated with heavy snows.
Many more Carolinians were just as perplexed.
Thundersnows are more common around the Great Lakes and in western cities such as Salt Lake City, said Patrick Market, an atmospheric science professor at the University of Missouri who studies thundersnows as a forecasting tool.
"Those people who heard it in Charlotte are not crazy," Market said. "In the grand scheme of things, thundersnows are rare, but we think they've probably been underreported, too.
"In most places, people just aren't positive about what they're hearing."
The thunder, he said, is produced primarily from cloud-to-could strikes of lightning, generated by instability in the atmosphere from cold, moist air being lifted into the snowstorm and mingling with much colder air.
Thursday's thunder, which could be heard between early and midmorning, sounded different from a springtime thunder, which rolls across the horizon.
It had a deeper, more hollow sound Thursday.
Market said snow could muffle thunder. You couldn't see lightning flashes because clouds and snow absorb the light.
Justin Lane, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Greer, S.C., said soundwaves from thunder could have been muffled by stable air 2,000 feet below.
"In the spring, we get warm, humid air from the surface mixing with cool air," Lane said. "During strong winter storms, we can develop instability in midlevels of the atmosphere."
Mac Leland of Charlotte has no training in meteorology. He's 7.
He just knows what he heard, and it sounded like thunder.
"It was a boom," said the boy, who heard it Thursday morning. "It sounded like a car hit one of those things that makes electricity."
"You mean a transformer?" Mac's mother, Sandy, asked.
"Yes, a transformer."
Sandy Leland admitted to thinking she was hearing things, too.
"It was just so odd," she said. "You just don't think of snow and thunder together."
That's how Becky Ferguson of Charlotte described the experience.
She heard "one big, loud rumble" in the morning. It scared her kitten, Smudge.
"He just crouched down on the porch floor, unsure of what he'd heard," Ferguson said. "Of course, snow and thunder are new to him, being the kitten that he is. But the two together were a bit overwhelming.
"It was just strange. I think I've heard thunder with a snowstorm before. But this was my most vivid experience."
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/8053349.htm
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