I haven’t see thunder snow in 20 years or so. It took me a few minutes to figure out after wondering why there were that many Transformers blowing out(the flashes), without losing power. Then I finally heard the thunder.
I suppose it shouldn’t be that surprise considering that 15 miles south is a major normal thunderstorm(stupid cold weather bubble set up like a force field on the southern Michigan border). But it still took e along time to register
Yep, its differnt and cool for sure. Have had about three major strikes so far here in Novi. And its bright like morning outside now. Hope the power stays on.
Heh, I was just visiting MPSIMS to post about this myself when I saw you beat me to it. Your post is much more refined and subdued…I was going to go with THUNDERSNOW!!! 
After the first flash I immediately thought ‘transformer explosion’ too, especially when I didn’t hear thunder afterward. But another brighter, closer flash with some pretty loud thunder revealed it was definitely thundersnow with a big cell pretty close above us. My kids even thought it was pretty interesting, as jaded as they are.
Sorry to uh… < taps Mic, Pauses for effect,> Steal your thunder.
The power thing is why I was watching so carefully. Spend 4 days without last week. Actually sweating my ass off because I turned my Thermostat to 82, just to have a buffer if i lose it again tonight.
Thunder does seem to have stopped in my area for the last 10 minutes or so though.
*rimshot!*
Yeah, I worry about our power too. It used to be we’d lose power after a gentle breeze in the DTE map parallelogram zone we’re in. I used to joke that Mrs. solost’s wind chimes on the back deck were a clear harbinger of it. It’s gotten marginally better but you still never know. Our longest outage was 5 days.
They (DTE) chopped/butched the trees around here pretty good last week after the ice storm. But the weight of the snow has me wondering if I’ll have power by morning.
Yeah getting seriously concerned here now. The snow depth on the ground is close to nothing. The snow coming down looks like powdered sugar. But the bushes outside my window are the most bowed I ever seen them, It’s like powdered sugar made of lead on glue I guess. Watching the radar hoping to get out of the precipitation zone, hoping again the wind is from the favorable direction, then still more hoping more to get into the 40’s forecasted tomorrow without any critical branches falling.
It started snowing here in Toronto about 90 minutes ago and we’re getting thunder right now.
A week or so ago, during the huge ice storm that hit us, Mrs. solost and I kept hearing branches breaking all night, and hoped something big was not going to hit our house. A magnificent white pine in our backyard turned out to be the source of all the breaking sounds. We found branches on the ground underneath our white pine the next day, the size of pretty big trees themselves. We’re still working on clearing it up. Hoping that white pine is not too damaged and will prosper. Also hoping this storm doesn’t damage our trees any more.
I’m wondering how they were so incredibly wrong for today’s weather forecast in Chicago. We were getting winter storm warnings since yesterday. 5-7" of snow expected. Warnings continued through this morning, and then nothing. Not even a dusting of snow.
Not that I’m complaining, just I’ve never seen the forecast be quite this wrong before.
We’re caught in it too! Wild bouts of lightening, then deep roaring thunder. All amidst wet heavy, nonstop driving snow and whistling high winds.
I just cleared a narrow path to the street, it was eight inches deep and still falling steadily.
Even though it’s ten at night, I wasn’t the only one out shovelling. If another 8” should fall overnight, we’ll be very glad we did so, come morning.
Happy to be back watching it from inside, and in front of a fire.
How did y’all fare in the aftermath? The news is saying our area got 10” of snow. I stuck a ruler in the snow in a couple spots and only measured 6.5”, but it was close to the house so may have been a relatively sheltered side.
Looks like our big white pine out back lost a couple more branches. That poor tree really got beaten up with the one-two punch of this and the ice storm 10 days ago. At least we didn’t lose our power.
First time I’ve heard the term “thunderstorm”. Probably because I avoid cold cities. Just one more confirmation as to how climate change is working itself out right in front of our eyes.
Cold is what ran us out of Las Cruces, New Mexico. I figured we would not have harsh winters, but one year it got down to minus 11 F. The snow froze on the ground, state ran out of propane, rolling power stoppages, elderly people in rural areas froze to death in their homes…we were 50 miles from Mexico!
How does an entire state run out of propane? We moved to Florida the next year, and the whole experienced convinced me that although I really liked the New Mexico culture and food, living in a state that’s poorly run could cost you your life.
Looks like close to a foot here.
I’m not going out to measure, but it looks like another 4”-6” overnight, on top of the 8” that fell last night.
Glad I shovelled, it’s very heavy snow!
(Already got a fire in the stove!)
Well didn’t lose power, but a nice and tall Cyress tree on the corner of my neighbors yard split down the middle and left three trunks in our yards, one of them taking out part of my fence and another is covering my walk outs patio. Its a great lost, now we do not have a privacy barrier between our houses decks and I can look directly into their sunroom from mine. Not happy about this, a tree like that just cannot be replaced.
Ended up with about 5 inches of snow, but its wet and very heavy. It’s going to be a big workout for my battery powered snowblower. At least no one was hurt and power stayed on.
Aw man, I wish I could stay home and build a fire, but of course of all days we planned to go out to dinner and a comedy show tonight, if I can dig us out. Heading out now to try to clear our huge driveway with my puny lawn tractor with a shovel attachment. Wish me luck.
I saw the sky light up from the lightning last night (not the bolt itself), and asked, “is that lightning?” There was even enough time for my wife to answer “no” before the thunder sounded.
This morning there was only about 4 inches of snow accumulated, higher in the drifts, and even higher where our plough service left it in front of our driveways. It was heavy and wet.
The tiring part for us was the two trees that lost about half each of their branches. My old electric chainsaw with a fresh chain cut through everything like butter, but it was still extremely tiring. The township has some picky published rules about how it needs to be packaged for pickup, but my massive pile looks like other massive piles, so we’ll see what happens.
Here we go again. It hasn’t stopped snowing here since 6am. At first it was very light and fine. It didn’t stop, but barely piled up. Now it’s snowing harder, bigger flakes, and visibly piling up. Doesn’t look like stopping any time soon either.
I’ll be by the fire.
We didn’t get much here at all this time, Maybe 4 inches, but there was enough residual heat in the sidewalk and street they melted themselves clear about 3 hours after it ended.