Editor's note: This article originally was published March 4, 2009. We are re-posting it because thundersnow was observed in New York City during the storm that hit the East Coast in the past few days.

It's been more than 30 years—during the Blizzard of 1978 to be exact—since Neil Stuart saw "thundersnow," a weather phenomenon featuring the unusual combination of thunder, lightning and snow. The National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist was 10 years old, living near Boston. The storm—which he says "is famous in meteorological circles" and influenced his career path—dumped 27 inches (67 centimeters) of snow on the ground over two days. The heaviest snow, however, came during a six-hour thundersnow storm that delivered one foot of snow over a six hour period.

Seeing thundersnow come down is "like watching a time-lapse movie of the snow building up, because it falls so quickly," Stuart says.

Thunder and lightning during a snowstorm is different from a run-of-the-mill snowstorm; it is extremely rare—fewer than 1 percent of observed snowstorms unleash thundersnow, according to a 1971 NSW study. But recorded observations of the phenomenon date back to 250 B.C., say ancient Chinese records translated in 1980 by atmospheric scientist Pao-Kuan Wang, now of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Today, researchers are interested in thundersnow for its predictive value. According to Patrick Market, an associate professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri, a 30-year study of snowfall found that when lightning is observed during a snowstorm, there is an 86 percent chance that at least 15 centimeters of snow will fall within 113 kilometers of the flash. Researchers are trying to determine the combo of atmospheric conditions required to create thundersnow to help them better predict heavy snowfall—which they define as at least 20 centimeters falling at a rate of 7.5 to 10 centimeters per hour—and issue warnings about hazardous weather before it hits, giving people time to prepare, take cover and get off the road. (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that more than 800 deaths were caused by snow-related traffic accidents in 2007.)

By the time the lightning flashes during a thundersnow-storm, it is often already too late to prepare local residents for the whiteout on the way. "If we're talking about the observation of thundersnow," Market says, "the predictive value is on the order of minutes to hours."

4 Comments

1. 1. BoRon 05:52 PM 12/27/10

   "...thunder results from the sound waves created by the rapid cooling and contraction of the air superheated by the lightning."
   
   What about the initial expansion of the air and the water/ice expansion to steam? This, it would seem, would occur much more rapidly than the subsequent cooling.

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2. 2. drafter 02:41 PM 12/28/10

   nothing unique here it occurs every year in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, not every storm but many during the year.

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3. 3. ennui 12:40 AM 12/29/10

   The technology used by the Flying Saucer has many
   spin-offs. One is the control of Tornadoes.
   It would also be able to control exessive rain and snowfall.
   Who are those Scientists that pretend to be interested?

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4. 4. R.Blakely 05:34 AM 1/8/11

   Usually, water droplets cause charges to build in clouds till lightning occurs. Charge has to conduct in the cloud that is gaining or losing charge. This requires water vapor droplets to transfer electric charges, which occurs during turbulent mixing in thunderstorms. But snow usually falls from calm clouds, usually, and so charge buildup does not occur because the number of water droplets is greatly reduced in freezing air, unless warm air is mixing violently with freezing-type air. Look at YouTube videos of Kelvin's water drop electric generator if you are interested in discovering how lightning actually can occur between clouds.

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