Matt's Weather Rapport is written by Vermont-based journalist and weather reporter Matt Sutkoski. This blog has a nationwide and worldwide focus, with particular interest in Vermont and the Northeast. Look to Matt's Weather Rapport for expert analysis of weather events, news, the latest on climate change science, fun stuff, and wild photos and videos of big weather events. Also check for my frequent quick weather updates on Twitter, @mattalltradesb
The more colorful the United States map on the home page of the
National Weather Service is, the more active the weather. The
map was pretty colorful early this mornin.
As expected, it's going to be a pretty active day in the United States as a pretty good sized storm makes its way through the middle of the nation.
There's a mix of severe weather, wind, snow and flooding out there, which has been forecast for days and is coming to fruition.
Texas was under the gun yesterday with a few areas of flooding and severe weather.
Today, the main risk ofsevere storms and possible tornadoes will shift to much of the Midwest today, with the most concentrated risks of high winds and a few tornadoes expected in two areas:. One hot spot will be a zone in and immediately surrounding southern Illinois. That same area is also under a threat of some flooding today.
Iowa is another hot spot for the risk of severe storms, with maybe a tornado or two. A blizzard is still expected to develop in a fairly broad area centered around the spot Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska meet.
VERMONT WEATHER
We're definitely beginning a spell of whiplash weather that'll last until Saturday. Wait a minute and it will change, that's for sure.
There was a little snow and rain coming down in Vermont this morning mostly soutb of Route 2. That should taper off later leaving us with a quiet and cloudy day.
Forecasters are still expecting a shot of rain late tonight and early Friday, followed by a relatively windy and warm day. If the air mixes well, a lot of us could still make it into the 60s for highs.
A band of showers and possible rumbles should come through in the afternoon. If some storms can grab some strong winds blowing overhead and bring those winds to the surface, an isolated spot or two in Vermont could get some gusty winds from the storms.
The latest NOAA Storm Prediction Center outlook has New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and western New England in a zone for a marginal risk of severe thunderstorms Friday. This area includes the part of Vermont that is roughly south and west of Interstate 89.
A marginal risk zone is defined as one in which isolated severe storms might develop, but they will tend to not last very long.
That sharp cold front is still definitely coming through Friday night, plunging us back into winter. High temperatures will only make it to the low 30s Saturday, despite a fair amount of sun. Gusty northwest winds will make it feel even colder.
Sunday will also be pretty sunny, and the winds will be lighter. But it will still be cold with highs only in the 30s.
Some computer models hint at a few inches of snow for us on Tuesday but other forecasting models say no dice on that one. So stay tuned. We'll have to wait and see on that.
National Weather Service map from Monday afternoon shows a bizarre combinayion of a ice storm warnings (in purple) and a severe thunderstorm warning (in orange). Usually these two warnings are in different seasons, not together on the same day/
Hi, I'm back after a one day hiatus in which I was traveling from the blizzardy snows of South Dakota toward the very weird storminess over New England on Monday.
And what a strange storm it was! I don't see anything the record books in which a nasty winter storm of snow, freezing rain, sleet and wind combined simultaneously with severe thunderstorms with damaging hail.
That was the situation in New England yesterday, folks! There's a couple videos at the bottom of this post.
I'll get into more of that in a minute, but first, we're not even quite done with the storm yet.
This thing was a sprawling mess which kept sprouting new centers and new bouts of rough weather from California to Maine.
The last of these storms is near Downeast Maine, and is dumping heavy snow on the northern and western parts of that state.
It's a remnant piece of a previous part of this storm that we Vermonters have to worry about today and tonight. In case you haven't noticed, it's pretty mild out there this New Year's Eve.
In many, but not all Vermont valley locations, yesterday's ice is melting off the trees. That's a good thing, as you don't want to have the branches weighed down by the ice and risk more tree and power line damage.
One reason it's mild out is there is a cold front of sorts attached to that remnant piece of the storm near the eastern Great Lakes.
This sort of cold front has a lot of energy with it. There was even more lightning to report this morning in Ohio. This front will generate some heavy snow showers as it approaches tonight.
The National Weather Service in South Burlington says the timing suggests that the heavier snow showers will come through northern New York between 4 and 8 p.m. today. They'll get into the Champlain Valley between about 7 and 10 p.m. and into the eastern half of Vermont between 9 p.m. and midnight.
This obviously means trouble for people out partying for New Year's Eve. A quick one to three inches of snow, combined with some wind, will sharply reduce the visibility on the roads, and get them slippery fast.
Probably more important is the temperature. When temperatures are near the freezing mark in this snow squally situation, it's a lot worse on the roads than if readings were far below 32 degrees. In very cold weather, a lot of the snow just blows off the roads. It does compact into some ice, but it's not too, too bad when it's super cold.
However, when the temperature is warmish, like today and this evening, water on the road freezes as the temperatures fall during the onset of the snow. The snow will be relatively wet. Wet snow compacts into thick layers of slippery ice beneath car tires. There will still be a little water on top of all this mess, which makes things even more slick.
Arrived home from a trip to find the trees in my St. Albans, Vermont\ yard were mercifully not too weighed down by ice from Monday's storm.
Combine this with drunk drivers on New Year's Eve and you have a real mess on your hand. I get it that I'm being a New Year's Eve Debbie Downer with this news. But it's all in an effort to help you plan ahead.
Or stay home. That's what me and my husband Jeff do every New Year's Eve. Tonight is amateur hour. It's more fun to sip Champagne at home.
In any event, this snow tonight is good news for the ski areas. It'll be kinda powdery up there. Groomers can mix this in with the slop from yesterday, leaving the slopes in pretty good shape for welcoming 2020 with some skiing and riding
MONDAY'S WEIRDNESS
Monday wasn't the first time there's been lightning and thunder during a New England ice storm. But these were definitely the strongest storms I and anyone else has seen with an ice storm. For those of you in northern and central Vermont who wonder what I'm talking about, the thundersleet storms passed well south of you.
A New England ice storm is often a recipe for some thunder. Usually, an ice storm features a very strong punch of very warm air from the south coming into New England several thousand feet overhead.
Meanwhile, low level cold air drains in from Quebec. Rain from the overhead warm air freezes on the way down to form sleet, or freezes on contact with the ground to accumulate some dangerous ice. This is exactly the situation New England faced on Monday.
This warm air above can be quite unstable and create elevated thunderstorms that form above the temperature inversion that is keeping the cold air locked in at the surface. For instance, there were thunderstorms in Vermont during the Great Ice Storm of 1998.
On Monday, the storms turned out to be quite strong, and formed into a system we normally and often see during severe thunderstorm outbreaks in the summer.
One thunderstorm formed ahead of the main line of storms and went through western and central Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut. This storm very much resembled a supercell thunderstorms, the kind that can produce large hail and even tornadoes.
Supercells usually form ahead of the main band of storms that form along a squall line or ahead of a cold front. That's how Monday's initial storm behaved. It probably was technically a supercell, since it was rotating and had a radar presentation that resembled a supercell.
Because the storm was elevated above the cold layer near the surface, it would have never been able to spin down a tornado toward the ground. (The rotation with this storm was insufficient to produce a tornado even if that low level cold air wasn't around.)
However, supercells and that type of storm that formed Monday in central New England can produce large hail and this one certainly did. Rising and falling air currents in the storm grabbed raindrops and sleet pellets and formed large hail stones.
Some of the hail stones were an inch or more in diameter, as big or bigger than quarters and enough to dent vehicles. Certainly, these were the biggest hailstones on record for December in New England.
The main line of thunderstorms came through later, dumping more hail, and triggering more lightning and thunder across much of southern and central New England. Some of storms extended into southern Vermont.
On top of all this, the freezing rain was bringing down trees and power lines in the Adirondacks, southern Vermont and New Hampshire and much of Massachusetts.
Most, but not all of the power is back on in New England and New York as of early this afternoon.
Videos:
Security cameras caught the noisy thundersleet and large hail in Westfield, Massachusettts. And also the reaction from a stunned occupant of the building:
The freezing rain affected Ontario, Canada, too, as this enthusiastic motorist tells and shows us:
X marks the spot where the North Pole is on this map. Red box points to where there was lightning recently.
Time to check in once again to the not-so-Great White North, meaning the Arctic, which continues to have an extraordinarily hot summer.
You've seen some posts this summer noting how hot it is up there, but the news keeps coming. Alaska beach weather. Arctic wildfires. Summer thunderstorms rattling around the North Pole.
This in an area that is normally bleak and chilly despite the usual 24-hour a day sun in the first half of summer.
In general, if you want a thunderstorm, it's fine to have cold, dry air aloft, but you need relatively warm, humid air near the surface. We get that here in Vermont in the summer, so we have thunderstorms. As does pretty much everybody else in the mid-latitudes.
The Arctic has always had plenty of cold, dry air around. But warmth and humidity, at least compared to what it normally is up there, is usually scarce. Which means so are thunderstorms.
It's possible there has been lightning that far north before, but nobody that I've found knows of it. And one thunderstorm doesn't prove climate change. But this is odd. And warm.
It does make sense that lightning could become more common in the Arctic. There are signs it already is getting more frequent. When the Arctic ocean is more ice covered, that stabilizes and chills the air, squelching any attempts at the billowing clouds that can produce lightning.
When there's open water, it can collect more heat, creating rising air currents and produce thunderstorms under the right conditions. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level on record for this time of year, so it's kinda not surprising they had a weird thunderstorm up there.
The ever helpful Category 6 weather and climate bloghas given us a nice update on this summer in Alaska, which statewide, was the hottest on record.
The records are incredible, but the town that takes the cake in my opinion is Kotzebue, along the coast in northwestern Alaska. May, June and July there were the hottest on record. They have not had a single cooler than normal day since February 14! The last time Kotzebue had a cooler than normal month was two years ago.
That pretty much the entire state of Alaska was record warm in July is particularly incredible considering how vast it is. Superimpose Alaska on the Lower 48 and it covers the entire middle of the nation.
So far, the warm Alaska summer has extended through the first half of August. Another heat ridge might build up there over the coming week or two, which would prolong the odd hot summer in Alaska.
SEA ICE AND OUR WINTERS
At least one new study suggests that melting sea ice is NOT making our winter in Vermont more harsh. The debate continues....
As I've mentioned in previous blog posts here, some climate scientists have been wondering if the loss of Arctic sea ice have been making winters here in Vermont, elsewhere in the United States and in Europe harsher.
The theory is that the loss of sea ice makes the jet stream wavier and helps get it stuck, causing cold air to plunge down on us from the north.
A new study questions this theory. As ScienceDaily points out, the study says that although low winter Arctic ice levels and tough winters here often coincide, the low sea ice isn't having a big influence on these winters.
With or without climate change, Arctic sea ice levels fluctuate year to year. Sometimes there's not much ice, other times there's quite a bit. The overall trend is down for the ice, but it's not a steady drop over years and decades.
Atmospheric weather patterns tend to promote particularly relatively small amounts of sea ice in the Arctic during some winters. Those same weather patterns cause cold snowy winters in eastern North America and western Europe.
This won't be the final word on this issue. I'm sure the scientists will continue studying and debating this one.
The first thunderstorm of the day is seen here weakening east of St. Albans, Vermont shortly after noon today after dumping a brief downpour on Georgia, Vermont. Stronger storms, a few possibly severe, are possible later this afternoon.
It's a little before 1 p.m. Tuesday afternoon here in Vermont, and I could just change a word or two and begin this post the way I began it Sunday.
Which was like this: "As of a little before 1 p.m. this humid Sunday afternoon, showers and thunderstorms were rapidly firing in much of Vermont and northern New York."
Just change "Sunday" to "Tuesday" and away we go.
Of course, there are differences. The storms are actually less widespread than they were at this time Sunday, as the peak conditions for the storms are coming a little later than they did Sunday. They will become much more numerous soon.
More importantly, there is a somewhat greater risk of some scattered severe storms than there was on Sunday, when only a couple locations in Vermont experienced a little damage.
Both on Sunday and this morning, NOAA's Storm Prediction Center had Vermont and surrounding areas under a marginal risk zone for severe storms. That would mean isolated severe storms that don't last long, cover very few areas and are barely severe.
Like on Sunday, we've gotten quite a bit of sun, which has helped heat and destabilize the air, making us ripe for storms. (It was already 90 degrees in Burlington, Vermont as of 1 p.m.)
Unlike Sunday, there's a bit more wind shear in the atmosphere. That means winds are changing speed and direction with height over us, which helps power the storms.
The best chances for strong to severe storms this afternoon and early evening are over northern New York and in Vermont west of the Green Mountains and north of Rutland.
The first storms to form late this morning over northern New York faded as they moved into Vermont, but the upper level dynamics to support subsequent storms is sneaking into northwest Vermont, so I don't think some of the storms will weaken much before reaching New Hampshire.
The biggest threat - other than the obvious lightning and downpours - from today's storms are local strong, damaging winds, possibly going to 60 mph or even a little higher.
Most of us won't experience such mayhem. But a few places in northern New York and Vermont probably will. It's probably best to postpone that lake boat ride or that long hike through the woods for another day. It's supposed to be nice on Thursday!
Sunday's storms made for highly variable rainfall totals across Vermont. A few places got nothing, a few others got more than 1.5 inches. Town A got soaked, and Town B three miles down the road stayed dusty.
It'll be like that today, too. Although some of the peak rainfall totals will be higher than Sunday's. The storms will have a bit more organization than they did Sunday, which could produce bigger, heavier areas of rain. Many of us could still use the rain, so that's OK.
However there is also a bit of the risk of those dreaded training thunderstorms. That's when storms line up like boxcars on a railroad track, so several storms end up going over the same spot. That can lead to local flash flooding, even it it has been dry up until now. A few inches of rain in a couple hours can create high water, no matter how dusty it was before the storms arrived.
The storms will peter out pretty quickly after sunset this evening, but there's still a chance of some showers and maybe a rumble of thunder all night as a cold front approaches.
More humid weather with showers and storms will come Wednesday as the front limps through. Chances of severe weather will be further east, more likely in southern and eastern New England than in Vermont or New York.
A chaotic looking evening sky over Colchester, Vermont on
Saturday as thunderstorms blossomed in the region.
Many of us in Vermont were treated once again Saturday to some fun, stormy skies, thunder and lightning.
There were reports of some damage as a few of the storms became severe. Interestingly at my place in St. Albans, Vermont, I was under a severe thunderstorm warning for the third time in a week, which is impressive. The storms around here, including those last evening, did not turn out to be damaging at all.
That strong upper level low in Quebec we've been talking about was slowly sinking southward Saturday evening. Even though there's not a major storm at the Earth's surface. this upper level pool of cold air is dynamic and creating plenty of instability.
Warm, humid weather usually feeds thunderstorms, but it wasn't super warm or super humid last evening. But the energy of this cool pool from Quebec was able to make lots of thunderstorms blossom Saturday evening. Some of them were strong to severe. But even if not, they were widespread.
And pretty, as you can see by the photos in this post.
Orange post-sunset light pokes through dark storm clouds
Saturday evening in St. Albans, Vermont.
You wouldn't expect anything in the way of thunderstorms today, again, at least on paper. It's overcast and cool this morning. Nothing that would inspire thunderstorms. A dull rain, maybe, but nothing dramatic.
But like I said, this upper level storm is pretty feisty and will be able to kick off at least some thunderstorms. I think very few, if any will make it to severe levels.
Maybe in southern New England, there will probably be a few storms with damaging winds and large hail, mostly because it's a little warmer and a little sunnier there to add energy.
Even so, in the rest of Vermont, there will be frequent showers around. Many of us will hear thunder and see lightning today. A few thunderstorms will be able to generate gusty winds. Again nothing destructive, but the strongest storms could produce gusts as high as 30 to 35 mph.
There is even a good chance some of us will get hail. Nothing big, just pea sized. It's so cold aloft that if you get to just 8,500 feet in elevation, it'll get below freezing. Since there's not much space between subfreezing air and down where we are, there's little time or any hail stones that do form to melt. So some will make it down here.
Despite relatively dry-ish air over us, some of the showers and storms today could produce locally heavy downpours. The heaviest rains if they get going won't last long, so there's no real threat of flooding.
A band of heavy showers, with a few lightning strikes was over the Montreal area and heading south toward the Vermont border as of 8:45 a.m. this Sunday morning. Another zone of pretty good showers was over New York and appeared to be heading toward the southern half of Vermont.
The Quebec band of showers and thunderstorms appeared to be strengthening somewhat or at least holding its own as it moves south this morning, so these forecasts of potentially gusty and hail-ish storms seems pretty realistic.
This cold upper level low will get out of our hair quickly and it will be back go summer warmth by tomorrow.
As the week goes on, it'll keep getting warmer and especially more humid, so by the second half of the week, we'll be back to having chances of mostly afternoon and evening thunderstorms.
Here's a brief video I took of a stormy sunset and lightning strike as seen from St. Albans Saturday evening (Click on the square like thingy on the bottom right of the video to make it bigger and easier to see:
It's spring, so here in Vermont and in much of the rest of the nation, it's the season to expect the unexpected more so than any time of year. I think we're now in the peak "anything goes" weather time of year, so there's all kinds of relatively odd things going on.
For the most part, there's no super extreme weather to talk about for the next couple of days here or anywhere else in the East, but it sure is interesting for a weather geek like me.
There has been, or very soon will be, snow in unusual places for this time of year, a beautiful nor'easter, fire weather risks, some possible thunder, and some throwbacks to winter.
Many but not all of these are affecting us here in Vermont.
A NEAR-MISS NOR'EASTER
Yesterday, as an impressive nor'easter got going off the coast of North Carolina, the storm manufactured its own cold air pocket, which allowed rain to change to snow in many parts of North Carolina. Charlotte, North Carolina picked up 0.1 inches of snow, only the second time in the past 100 years they had measureable snow in April.
Some areas of the state picked up more than an inch and a half of snow. This is an area where trees are already leafing out, so it is unusual.
The nor'easter was beautiful, at least to us weather geeks. It did manage to stay offshore enough to minimize its impacts. That's a good thing because this was a strong one. Hurricane force winds were reported offshore. There were probably some intense waterspouts out there over the open ocean, and on satellite photos, the nor'easter developed a feature that looked like the eye of a hurricane.
Impressive nor'easter off the North Carolina coast yesterday.
Had this storm hugged the coast, there would have been a terrible snowstorm all the way up the East Coast into our neck of the woods, with flooding rains, and battering wind and storm surges in along the Northeast coast.
The nor'easter did produce gusty rains in eastern New England overnight and was dumping some snow in eastern Maine.
WIND AND FIRE
Behind this storm and ahead of a cold front coming in from the northwest, it's windy in the Northeast, or at least becoming so. The air is quite dry in much of the Mid-Atlantic states and in the southwestern half of New England.
This is the time of year when vegetation from last year is drying out and new green stuff hasn't really gotten going yet. The dry air and wind and the dead weeds and brush can easily go up in flames in this weather.
There's a big area including all of New Jersey, most of Pennsylvania, most of Maryland, parts of southwestern New York and other places that are under a Red Flag Warning today.
A Red Flag Warning means there's a big risk of fast moving, dangerous grass, brush or forest fires. It's kind of unusual to have this kind of a warning in this area, especially one that covers such a big area. But you do get these alerts in the Northeast from time to time around now. Red Flag Warnings are much more common in the West.
There have already been a lot of brush and forest fires in the area covered by the Red Flag Warning in recent days, so more are likely.
In parts of Vermont, particularly the Champlain Valley roughly south of Burlington and the Connecticut Valley floor south of White River Junction, the snow has melted. There is a risk of brush fires in these areas of the Green Mountain State, too, due to winds and dry air today.
THUNDERSTORMS? THEN WINTER AGAIN
A sign of spring is coming from the north today. But it being spring, so there's some wintry aspects of this, too.
That cold front coming in from the northwest is pretty starved for moisture, but does have a lot of energy with it. This looks like it will produce the first band of convective showers and possible thunderstorms of the warmer season in northern Vermont later today.
Convection is basically those towering clouds you see mostly in the summer that produce showers and thunderstorms. They're mostly a creature of the warm season.
So, it's a sign of spring I suppose that we might get some convection today, especially near the border with Canada. There won't be anything severe, but there might be some rumbles of thunder, some gusty winds, maybe even a tiny hailstone or two in the stronger ones.
It will be windy anyway this afternoon, with gusts over 45 mph, but the stronger storms racing across northern New York and Vermont could produce gusts stronger than that.
As the cold front goes through, it will produce a few more scattered showers, and those will turn to snow in the mountains as it gets colder. Winter will kind of come back. Tomorrow will be windy and cold, with highs in many areas not getting out of the 30s. The coldest valleys of the Northeast Kingdom could reach the single digits above zero again tomorrow night.
A weather system coming through Friday and Friday night could put down a slushy light accumulation of snow in the mid and high elevations, though it will probably be cold, light rain in the valleys.
EARLY SPRING CANCELED
It also is beginning to appear that long range forecasts suggesting that spring would really blossom in our neck of the woods in April were wrong. Many extended forecasts issued in late March indicated April would mostly be on the warmer than average side here and in much of the rest of the nation.
Although there will probably be some relatively pleasant days here and there, the trend will be unsettled and on the chilly side most days going forward through most of the month here in Vermont.
Blame, in part, this ridiculously resilient ridge in Alaska that has kept that state unusually warm for months. For some reason, these northward and incredibly persistent bulges in the jet stream have been forming repeatedly over the past decade in the eastern Pacific or in western North America for the past decades.
I know climate scientists are looking into this. Are these "ridiculously resilient ridges" at least partly a product of climate change or just chance? Some preliminary science suggests that climate change can create "stuck" weather patterns, so we shall see.
Lake effect is a hallmark of winter, especially early winter. This time of year, and on into December (and the rest of winter if the lakes don't freeze) cold air often sweeps across unfrozen water of the Great Lakes.
According to NOAA( and basically every meteorologist), cold winds pick up moisture from the lakes. Relatively warm lake water heats the bottom layer of air, and lake moisture evaporates into the cold air.
Since warm air is lighter and less dense than cold air, it rises and cools. The moisture that evaporated into the air condenses and forms clouds, and snow comes out of those clouds.
Lake effect snow squalls invade Buffalo, N.Y. in 2007.
The lake effect snows usually organize themselves into narrow bands. It might be sunny and cold overhead, but you see a dense line of clouds in the distance, which is a lake effect snow band.
If you drive into that snow band, you end up in what is basically a blizzard, with gusty winds and often very, very heavy snowfall.
These lake effect snow bands can cause accumulations at the rate of five inches per hour. Sometimes lightning and thunder punctuate the lake effect snow.
Even smaller lakes can produce lake effect snow, if the wind is right. Here in Vermont, long narrow Lake Champlain forms the state's western border. Sometimes, if the wind is from the due north, it goes the length of the lake and can dump a few inches of lake effect snow on the southern Champlain Valley.
If the wind is more from the west, the wind goes through a narrow expanse of Lake Champlain and there's not enough time or water for the cold air to collect enough moisture to produce lake effect snow.
In early winter, late November and December, bodies of water in southern Canada and the northern United States aren't frozen. That means a lot of moisture can get into the early season cold air. Even if there are no lake effect snows, all this moisture contributes to the general cloudy conditions you see this time of year in the Great Lakes and northern New England.
Here in northwestern Vermont, we only receive roughly 30 percent of possible sunshine in November and December, thanks in good measure to lake moisture. The same is true in much of the rest of northern New England, southern Quebec, Ontario and the Great Lakes states.
This, combined with the short days, definitely makes early winter dark and depressing in the North Country.
The weather is forecast to stay cold over the next week to ten days in the Northeast. Often, chilly west to northwest winds will blow across the lakes during that period. So you'll hear more about lake effect snowstorms over the next several days.
Here's a video of a lake effect thunder snow squall today in Ohio:
Storm clouds move into Sheldon, in northwestern Vermont shortly
before noon Wednesday.
The storms in the Northeast on Wednesday pretty much played out as expected: Almost everyone in Vermont, northern New York, much of New Hampshire and Maine got some pretty good thunderstorms today.
The storms developed during the morning in northwestern Vermont, and moved rapidly eastward, as the line the storms were traveling along slowly sank southward across the state during the day.
Also as expected, only a handful of locations got storms that could genuinely be described as severe and damaging.
Most of that happened in central Vermont, where there were reports of trees down and power failures.
Storm clouds near St. Albans, Vermont Wednesday.
Other areas with severe weather reports were western and northern New Hampshire, western Maine, western Massachusetts and an area east of Albany, New York.
One of the things I noticed in particular with the waves of storms that crossed Vermont during the day was the large amount of cloud to ground lightning and super loud thunder.
There were quite a lot of lightning strikes across most of the state.
I was also struck, no pun intended, of people out in the storms during the worst of the lightning strikes as I traveled through western Vermont today.
Storm clouds darken the sky over Hinesburg,
Vermont Wedneday afternoon.
In Sheldon, a guy holding a "Slow/Stop" road construction sign stuck it out through the lightning in an open, exposed area.
In Georgia, a guy stubbornly rode his bike through the lightning and downpour. Another guy in Milton mowed the lawn in the lightning. A couple women in Bristol enjoyed their outdoor swimming pool as the sky flashed overhead.
As far as I know, nobody got struck. But still.
The storms were tapering off, as expected Wednesday evening.
More showers and storms will return by Sunday in New England, but at least for now, I'm not expecting severe weather.
For some reason, over the past couple of years, a surprising number of winter storms in the United States have spat out lightning and "thunder snow"
James Menzies of @UKStormChaser on Twitter captured
these incredible cloud to ground lightning bolts amid
sleet and snow Sunday near Norman, Oklahoma.
The one crossing the nation now really takes the cake. Huge swaths of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and other areas had a lot of thunder and lightning as heavy sleet fell.
Sleet was the predominant precipitation in that area, though some thunderstorms also had freezing rain or snow.
Usually, thunder in winter storms comes from so called "elevated" thunderstorms. The cold air near the earth's surface has undercut the warm air thunderstorms usually thrive on.
So the thunderstorms develop a little higher up in the atmosphere than they normally do, up in the warm air that's on top of the thin layer of chill near the ground. In these cases, most of the lightning is up high, crackling between the clouds. Some strikes hit the ground, but not many.
This winter weather system had a number of storms with lots of lightning strikes hitting the ground. Some were actually quite severe, and you had the spectacle of hail the size of quarters mixing with the deluge of sleet pellets beneath the thunderstorm.
A strange weather event indeed.
Here's what it looked like on the ground: Quarter sized hail causing damage amid just a torrential downpour of sleet in the midst of the storm, which also brought lightning and thunder to this area.
