I woke up this morning around 5:30, my husband was leaving for work. So I lied on the couch to make sure he got up the hill okay (he was curious to know what I was going to do if he didn't make it) (the answer is nothing, but hey, I was a cheerleader, what do you want me to do besides cheer you on?).
But I digress. It was snowing on TV, somewhere in Seattle or the surrounding area. The snow, all 2 or 3 inches of it, is nonstop news matter today. I saw not one, not two, but 3 different reporters in different areas, at least 20 miles apart from each other, pushing aside a thin layer of snow to reveal a thin layer of ice. Just in case we didn't get it from the first reporter. I was slightly bored and falling asleep at this point.
Then, of all things, they annouce we have SNOW THUNDER. WHAT? Am I dreaming this, or am I awake? Yep, in Snoqualmie, or Snohomish, or Sno-wherever the reporter was, it was snowing, and there was thunder. He explained that a thunderstorm in the snow was called Snow Thunder. I'm not buying it. First of all, I thought you needed heat to have thunder. I am sure it was just trucks crashing into each other on the road out of his sight and he was mistaking it for thunder. Or else some cute little boys were smashing a big thin sheet of metal that fell off of a truck (trucks around here drop stuff ALL the time), and that's what the reporter was hearing. I bet he'd fall for the War of the Worlds trick on the radio if we gave it a try.
Snow Thunder. What will they think of next? Snow Tsunami? That's a good one. Let's try it.
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2 comments:
He probably farted while on the air and had to call it something. Those mics are very sensitive. Maybe it started an avalanche.
So according to KOMO 4 News...here is the official word...news wouldn't lie, would they?
By Scott Sistek
Aside from the snow, it's probably been the second-most talked about thing in Seattle this morning - the two large claps of thunder as it started snowing.
The lightning during snow isn't any more special than regular lightning as far as how it's formed, but many across the Puget Sound region awakened this morning wondered why it seemed much louder than regular lightning.
The reason is two-fold. For one, the bolt struck near Seattle, so a lot of people heard it. Second though, thunder is louder in a snowstorm because cold, dense air is a much better conduit of sound.
(I should clarify -- it doesn't mean the thunder is louder than normal, just that the sound travels more efficiently, so it's louder when you hear it than you'd expect.)
The bolt was also reportedly quite bright, many say brighter than a usual lightning bolt. That's likely due to the snowflakes doing a good job of reflecting the light around.
Now, many people associate thunderstorms with warm events, but you can get thunderstorms during cold and snow storms. All you need is for it to be even colder in the upper atmosphere and some sort of mechanism to force the air upward. It's rare, since it's usually when it's this cold around here, we don't get much colder, but in this case, arctic air was moving in aloft over the milder air that moved in Wednesday, and the converging winds in the lower levels forced the air upward.
Lightning, in a very oversimplified way, is caused by a build up of static charge by the air particles moving around inside the cloud, much like scuffing your socked-feet on the carpet. The charge then discharges in what you see as lightning.
http://www.komonews.com/weather/blog/36398874.html
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