I now call upon the teeming millions to erradicate my ignorance on this subject. Yesterday consisted mostly of snow in the form of a storm - I haven’t taken out my ruler, but I’d say that there’s at least 15cm of snow on the ground that wasn’t there before. This on it’s own is no big deal for me, but the fact that late last night there was thunder and lightning is.
I have never heard/seen thunder and lightning in the winter, certainly not in conjunction with a snowstorm. I have just moved here this year for school, and I have already noticed that the Great Lakes area is decidedly more humid in the winter than the Eastern Townships of Québec, but I wouldn’t have expected this!
So, can anyone explain to me whats going on? Since I forget the little I learned about weather in grade 5, I’m hoping someone here can explain this to me. Is it not uncommon, and just simply didn’t happen in the area where I’m from?
Yes, it happens. I used to live near the south shore of Lake Ontario, and we got lightning with snowstorms about once every year or two. Now I live in Maine about 20 miles from the ocean, and we get lightning during a snowstorm about once every two or three years. For more information, see Snowstorm Lightning
It’s rare, but it does happen, particularly with lake-effect snowstorms. See this page for one of those loveable USA Today ‘infographics’ on the topic:
I am so glad you asked this question ** mnemosyne**. I was wondering the same thing. I’ve lived in SW Ontario my entire life and have never seen this happen until last night. It was very strange.
I’ll make the assumption that you live near me…(Kitchener, ON)
We got hit with the storm. Then the snow stopped and the thunder and lightning began. I thought it was odd, but just figured it was a result the the freezing rain we were to get.
Has anyone ever been skiing in the mountains in a snowstorm?
That’s crazy wild because you will hear thunder (or is it an avalanche?) and then they will shut down the chairlifts, getting everyone who is on one to the top first, of course. It usually doesn’t last long, but skiing in the middle of a storm, actually up in the clouds, with lightning cracking closely from above, is really freaky cool.
Try Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. (Alta & Snowbird resorts)
What is happening is that the area north of the warm front (and low pressure center) is usually stable. However, occasionally, you get a fairly potent storm (in this case), where there is some instability above the surface. In these cases, the inflow for the storms is actually above the surface (unlike most summer thunderstorms), and these thunderstorms are considered “elevated”. As temperatures in the atmosphere get cooler, instability is harder to obtain. Hence, almost any day in the summer will have some instability, while it is very rare in the winter (and even then, only aloft). Also helping the fact in this case is that with such a potent storm, the air rises more quickly than with a weaker storm. This extra lift can help to form areas of thunder.
This is very similar to spring time weather systems, where you have a large area of rain, and occasional areas of thunder, with temperatures that are cool. These “elevated” storms usually aren’t severe.
As to lake-effect thunderstorms, due to the large difference between the air temperature and the water temperature, it is possible to get some instability (more common than the previous example), and thunder-snow is more common.