What's Your Most Unusual Experience With Thundersnow?

[Stephen Levine]

A few experiences come to mind for me. During the 1980's I lived in New England. In December '80, an early season snowstorm moved into Boston area.
Around midnight, the snow tapered off and it got quite still. At that point, eerie sheets of blue lightning began to ripple across the sky from time to time, followed by very soft thunder. This interlude lasted only about 15 minutes or so, and the heavy snow returned after this.

Also near Boston I think around 1984, one day while I was walking in heavy wet snowfall, the entire sky suddenly turned into a brilliant pink flash. Instinctively I hit the ground, and waited for a stunningly long time for more lightning or thunder. Eventually, a long roll of thunder came.
In this particular storm, my neighborhood was real close to the rain/snow line.

A similar experience to this happened one night, near Dayton, Ohio during a snowburst in the late 1970's.

During the April 1982 blizzard in Boston, visibility was limited to yards by heavily falling snow and gusty winds. It was one thing to walk out in the snow and see the street disappear within a few houses, it was another to also be hearing nearly constant rumbles and roars of thunder at the same time. The air was so thick with prec. that I did not see any of the lightning.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

We had these once in a blue moon in Wichita Falls. They aren't much more than half a dozen light rolls. They typically come in late February or early March when they happen, followed by some transient, immediately melted snow.

I remember a freak storm on April Fool's Day in Lubbock where a weak T-storm line rolled through, followed by a brief but unusually heavy snow, the heaviest I saw there in three years by far. Snowmen were built, and three or four days later, when it was in the 70's again, the snowmen were all that was left. Some freshman even decided to pull a prank and put up a beautiful piece of sculpture from the snow resembling a certain part of the male anatomy. Seeing it shrivel and slump through the next few days was a tad bit unsettling on my walk to the Math/Stat building ...

By the way, I noticed you're from Arlington. I've always found it a little unusual how disparate the severe weather is between Wichita Falls and the 'plex - the Falls gets rolled over by storms that seem to have some kind of invisible womb just southwest of Seymour that pops out supers whenever a dry line sneaks up, but the Plex, with the notable exception of the incidents last year and of course the weirdo Ft. Worth tornado, comparatively gets spared the worst.

 

[Joel Wright]

Back in the December blizzard of '87. There was a lot of thunder with that one. Easily the most frequent I've ever personally witnessed with snow falling. Anyway, it seemed as if every time the lightning flashed, the wind would suddenly ramp up. I'm sure it was just coincidence, but it sure seemed at the time that they were somehow related. Winds were gusting 50-60mph for several hours as the blizzard/thundersnow raged on. I was only in 5th grade at the time, so I was absolutely astounded by what I was witnessing. I've still never seen anything like that till this date.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Had a great thundersnow event in Jan. 31st 1982...my senior year in HS in Kirkwood MO (St.Louis area). We ended up with 4"/hr. snowfall rates and totaled 22" with 5 ft. drifts at the end of the snowstorm. This started as heavy sleet...then the cg's started crackling all around. Then the heavy snow started like a wall of white. By far the heaviest snowfall I have ever seen. Great brilliant lightning too.

 

[Martin North]

I witnessed a pretty good thundersnow event in Belfast one time. Cannot remember the date exactly. It was real heavy snow though with really large flakes.

I recall that the lightning was mostly sheet.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

I have to ask the dumb newbie question here: any known photographs/vid of a tornado going over remainders of snow? The two events happened in quick succession here in Ames only a couple of days before I came here to visit the Ph.D. school in November 05 ...

 

[Martin North]

Will a Snow Devil do...

http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/97827.JPG

 

[Angie Norris]

First experience with thundersnow was during the Superstorm in March, 1993. It had started out as rain about 6pm on Friday and changed over to snow about 9pm. Thunder woke me up about 7am on Saturday, and my first thought was "Damn it, it's supposed to be snowing, not raining." I got to the living room window, looked out and saw more snow falling than I had ever seen . I never knew before that that thundersnow even existed. My next experience was in Norman at the NSSW (don't remember what year it was). Thunder woke me up about 2 or 3am, and I heard what sounded like small hail hitting the window. Got up and watched the sleet falling with some occasional CGs ...guess you'd really call that thundersleet instead of thundersnow!

 

[Nigel Bolton]

The thundersnow of 30/01/2003 was nothing unusual in the respect that the Arctic Front swept southwards across the UK bringing a short spell of heavy snow with weak thunder followed by very dry air and sunny skies.

UK snow is normally slushy, and snow showers before the TS were of such nature, big flaked and sticky. Once settled, a slow that set in.

Once the TS has passed through, dew points dipped to -8 to -10, low for the UK. This triggered an instant freeze as lying snow acted as freezing nucleii on melt water. The result, widespread ice, and much of the UK gridlocked with just a few cm of snow on the ground.

This was compouded later as further snowfall, up to 10cm stranded many cars on one of our motorways for up to 24 hours.

N.

 

[Paul Knightley]

28th Jan, 2004 thundersnow across much of central and southern England for me. The most intense Arctic front I've seen surged southwards, with hail and snow, and gusts to 70mph, along with thunder and lightning. It affected many places just before to just after sunset, and the resulting snow/slush froze solid and caused all manner of traffic problems.

 

[Saul Trabal]

Ahh, one of my favorite subjects...

Lessee-I'm thinking back to that mega nor-easter we had in the mid-1990s-for some reason, I'm thinking 1996. I had never seen such intense thundersnow before. We had an all-time record of around 6 feet of snow in my neighborhood, which was just west of New York City, in New Jersey. It was virtually white-out conditions. Lightning was almost continuous, and there was heavy thunder as well. No driving was allowed, unless it was an emergency. Side streets were impossible to navigate. Main roads were incredibly dangerous to travel on.

 

[J.K Oudshoorn]

Thundersnow occurs in Holland so now and then. I remember we had a line of snowshowers in the beginning of 2006 wich also brought lightning with them. IMO it was quite frequent, and some strikes were fairly close. It was hard to see the lightning strikes due to the thickness of the snow.

 

[Rockwell Schrock]

There was a really intense storm here on December 9, 2005. There was a low pressure system moving just off-shore and, for some reason, it deepened and strengthened extremely quickly; the closest term I've found to describe it is bombogenesis.

I was at a local coffee place with a friend. The wind really picked up and then came the horizontal snow and the thunder. I'm pretty sure there were multiple power flashes, as well. Then things got interesting. By the time I figured we had better go out exploring, it was too late. Every road out of town was blocked by downed trees and power lines. The straight-line winds were worst along Cape Cod Bay, where they slammed into trees full-force. We were without power for many days. I guess the kids on the school buses had one heck of a time getting home.

I still see remnants of that event to this day, where there are trees that haven't yet been cleaned up.

 

[S Hughes]

thundersnow now

I think we are having a thundersnow event right now in Belfast. Its been snowing for a few hours now and I am sure I heard thunder about an hour ago. The flakes were quite large in size soon after it happened but have now reduced to about half the size within the last 20 minutes or so. My first experience of this

 

[D. Hayes]

We had one late December 07 here in south central kansas. I heard the thunder rolling and went out side to watch for any sudden burst in snow fall. But it was coming down so hard already nothing seem to visably change. It sounded cool since the snow was muffeling the cracks. No bright flashes or anything just pretty white snow everywhere.