That’s when it thunders during a snowstorm. It’s doing that right now in the Twin Cities.
This is ominous.
The weather stations call it “thundersnow.” I think I’ve only seen it forecast once, and I’ve never experienced it in person. I’d like to; it sounds pretty freaky. Lewis Black used to have a couple of minutes in his act about thundersnow. He agreed with your assessment.
We had that the other day. The snow fell for about ten minutes. The first time I’d seen that here. Unsually we get hail.
We had one of those one summer. That was the coolest storm ever (IMO).
Flashback to one winter evening long ago, where I was sitting in my seat during a choir rehearsal and happening to glance over at the window. The clouds are purply-crimson (we get a lot of dim orange-ish light up in the night sky, it’s mostly from the old streetlamps) and it’s snowing furiously. Fine, all good, going to be freezing outside…
Then there’s a flash of light. And it’s sheet lightning, thin and bright, so it’s a purple flash.
Bug-eyed and more than a little freaked out, I demanded to know what was going on. “It’s a thunderstorm,” my seatmate told me, flipping the pages in our binder.
“But it can’t thunder during snow…”
To this day, I still can’t quite–almost, but not really–believe it.
I saw this a number of times when I was living in Santa Fe. Freaky. We also fairly frequently got those weird little snowball-falling-from-the-sky, not-flakes-but-not-hail things. We also got regular snow. And some pretty kick-ass hailstorms…Man, I miss the weather out there.
We had that in Feb. With a large dumping of snow too. It was pretty cool, except for the part where I had to shovel my damn driveway!
It’s a shame weather events don’t morph more often. Tornizzards, hurrihail, blizzados, thundercanes and droughtning might provide some relief from this dreary old warm and muggy.
I was driving through Alaska’s Matanuska Vally once and seemingly every house and business we passed had people outside looking at the sky. Curious, we stopped and asked someone what was up. They said “Thunder… we’ve never heard it before.” Being a product of Texas and Florida myself, I found that admission staggering.
Hmmm… coming from a snow-challenged region and only once seeing snow (from a plane window, over the Andes) I´m rather surprised to learn that lightning is a rarity during snow storms.
I would have thought that all those ice crystals rubbing against each other would produce a nice spark.
had thundersnow just a few weeks ago.
the thunder has an odd sound to it. a bit off. i wondered if it had to do with the “hushing” effect of snow.
What’s the difference between a tornizzard and a blizzado?
This happens about once a year or so around here. I’d never seen it until I moved to southern Ontario (from Quebec). It’s pretty cool. I love thunderstorms, at any time of year.
The first one is more tornado than blizzard, and the second is more blizzard than tornado. Or that’s my guess. Most people would probably leave their home state if they heard either one was coming.
Y chromosome.
They don’t serve the first one at Dairy Queen.
Wow, that would be wierd to hear for the first time, like something ominous is happening. There was a minor earthquake here in NH a few years ago and it was the funniest feeling.