# Snow and lightning? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 28, 2002, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406 "2002-12-28T22:09:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![alexr86](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a4c791/32.png) [@alexr86](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alexr86)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/1 "2002-12-28T22:09:44Z")
I know this question must’ve already been answered here, but my searches were futile! So, why isn’t there lightning or thunder during snowstorms, but these do exist in rainstorms? Or am I just blind? -Alex ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/2 "2002-12-28T22:21:36Z")
In the Great Blizzard of March '92, lightning and thunder accompanied the storm throughout much of the US S.E. ---
**Author:** ![Mephisto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@Mephisto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mephisto)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/3 "2002-12-28T22:22:23Z")
Weird. I was just thinking about posting a question on this very subject. I can only remember one time for sure when I was in a thunder snow storm. It was in northern Illinois ten-to-fifteen years ago, and it was very weird. Anyway, I know it can happen because I saw and heard it, however it must be incredibly rare. ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/4 "2002-12-28T22:22:25Z")
A websearch for “thundersnow” will find information on this. See, for instance: [http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/~schultz/light/mss.html](http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/~schultz/light/mss.html) [http://vortex.weather.brockport.edu/~egardine/](http://vortex.weather.brockport.edu/~egardine/) The short answer appears to be that you do sometimes get thunder and lightning during snowstorms, but the conditions required are fairly crucial. ---
**Author:** ![Mephisto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@Mephisto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mephisto)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/5 "2002-12-28T22:25:07Z")
Thanks for the links, **raygirvan**. They look interesting. ---
**Author:** ![alexr86](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a4c791/32.png) [@alexr86](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alexr86)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/6 "2002-12-28T22:34:45Z")
> [@](#): > > The short answer appears to be that you do sometimes get thunder and lightning during snowstorms, but the conditions required are fairly crucial. Okay… what are said conditions? And why don’t these conditions usually occur? -Alex ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/7 "2002-12-28T23:05:37Z")
On Christmas it snowed here in NY, and there was thunder and lightning later in the evening. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/8 "2002-12-28T23:11:26Z")
We had a memorable thundersnowstorm on March 8, 1984. Four inches fell in one hour and visibility was near zero. ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/9 "2002-12-28T23:26:08Z")
_alexr86_ _Okay … what are the said conditions?_ Best read the links. There are a few papers online, but I admit I don’t know enough meteorology to understand the context. We’re talking stuff like "… _within a broad region of upper-level divergence in a coupled ULJ pattern_ … ". ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/10 "2002-12-28T23:49:46Z")
> [@](#): > > This paper focuses upon two of those downwind lake areas known for lake-effect snowstorms: northern Utah (e.g., Carpenter 1993; Steenburgh et al. 1999) and western New York (e.g., Niziol et al. 1995). The desire is to concentrate on lower-tropospheric environments of surface-based convection, as in lake-effect snowstorms, rather than that of elevated convection (Colman 1990a,b, 1991). Preliminary exploration using broader criteria for thundersnow events that included elevated convective events revealed that limiting this study to surface-based lake-effect convection produced more robust results. > [@](#): > > Several important thundersnow parameters were established from background material. The theory of the thermoelectric effect (Wallace and Hobbs, 1977) and the article by Kitagawa, 1974, indicated the importance of a charge separation based on thermal properties of positive and negative ions at the-10ºC isotherm within the cloud. Kitawaga’s article also mentioned the importance of shallow convection and cloud age for wintertime thundersnow events. So in order to have thunderstorms during snow you need the same ingredients as any thunderstorm: convection and building up of charge differentials. Regular thunderheads are formed by convection, but convection in snow events is not usual. The ice crystals, as described in the second link, provide the basis for the charge separation. ---
**Author:** ![bbeaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c0e974/32.png) [@bbeaty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bbeaty)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2002, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/11 "2002-12-29T19:09:17Z")
Nobody knows how thunderstorms work. Well, they know how the charged droplets become separated into two populations (larger ones fall faster because of air viscosity). But how do the droplets become differentially charged in the first place? This is still one of the great unanswered questions. There are many competing theories about it, but the problem still hasn’t been “solved.” It’s hard to bring a functioning storm cloud into the lab. Some brave scientists have occasionally tried flying planes through thunderstorms, but I think this involved studies of aircraft lightning strikes. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/12 "2002-12-30T13:31:47Z")
6:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 30, 1999. New York/New Jersey was having a huge blizzard. Suddenly there was a huge bang and the sky light up. It blinded me for a few seconds. I thought a plane or an electrical transformer had exploded. It was a huge bolt of lightning. Truly spectacular. ---
**Author:** ![SavageNarce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@SavageNarce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SavageNarce)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/13 "2002-12-30T13:38:50Z")
I suspect that it happens more often than we realize. But the acoustical and visual properties of snow are such that we don’t see or hear it as easily as we would with rain. I have witnessed thunder and lightning in a snowstorm on more than one occasion, so it’s not like a “once in a lifetime” thing. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/14 "2002-12-30T13:53:24Z")
I’ve seen it. In '68, when I was a boy in Chicago. Saw it on my walk home from school. My parents _still_ don’t believe me. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/15 "2003-01-05T20:46:45Z")
And, some earlier threads on this subject: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=5080](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=5080) [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=50600](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=50600) ---
**Author:** ![dwc1970](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@dwc1970](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwc1970)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/16 "2003-01-05T21:36:09Z")
One time when we were skiing they had to evacuate everyone from the chairlifts because a thunderstorm was approaching, which I thought was rather surprising. We decided to head back to the lodge after we were informed of the evacuation when trying to board the lift. The storm that came in a few minutes later brought lightning and thunder, and snow (I was expecting rain). I was about 14 at the time. It was the first time I had ever witnessed such a phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![S\_Puppy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@S\_Puppy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/S_Puppy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/17 "2003-01-06T15:14:02Z")
Several years back we had lighting during a heavy snow storm. I got the impression at the time that I was the only one around who had never seen that before. ---
**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/18 "2003-01-06T18:13:50Z")
I’ve seen it exactly once and it was only snowing lightly. The cloud cover was pretty thick and low, though. This was about 12 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Ivar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/51bf81/32.png) [@Ivar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ivar)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-and-lightning/145406/19 "2003-01-06T19:08:54Z")
It happens regularly at Alta and Snowbird ski areas in Utah, I have taken vacation there and worked there and it was not an uncommon occurence at all. All the chairlifts would be evacuated, and oftentimes, the ski patrol didn’t know if the noise was from thunder or an avalanche. It is nearly impossible to know when visibility is down to about 10 feet. It’s pretty wicked, being in a snowstorm, seeing lightning and hearing thunder. I’m sure the article cited above was talking about the same part of Utah. Lake-effect snow drops all the time at Alta/Snowbird.