![]() Storm clouds, a little turbulance, rain (no hail sadly) but no lightning found at night. There were no further findings, in the last week I’ve been through areas of high Cape on the Garmins, in the forecast and in reality in South America. My first finding is the issue isn’t with the forecast from which MSFS generates live weather, it seems pretty good at predicting storms. One community member managed to find some live lightning in Australia which inspired me to go up and stalk some storms in the Meteoblue forecast and some showing up live on. Being a weather nut, I tend to gravitate towards forecast and current big weather events. "You can see lightning and hear thunder just like a regular thunderstorm.For fear of seeming like a broken record…Live thunderstorms with lightning are still as rare as hens’ teeth. It's not what you expect," explained Richardson who witnessed thundersnow in Wisconsin. Bolts of lightning slice through the sky, creating an eerie look. The winds, temperatures and low-pressure areas made for a perfect unstable environment.ĭuring thundersnows, the snow dampens the thunder so it sounds like a muffled timpani drum rather than the loud cracking and booming of a summer thunderstorm. ![]() High-gusting winds and record snowfalls blanketed the whole Atlantic Canadian region. A low-pressure storm formed off the east coast of the United States, intensifying as it moved north. In February 2004, thundersnows occurred in association with the blizzard dubbed White Juan, which struck Halifax, Nova Scotia, just months after Hurricane Juan had destroyed parts of that city. If the temperature is cold enough, snow falls instead of rain. This happens most often near the Great Lakes and other large bodies of water, when a cold front passes over a warm surface, causing the instability needed for a thunderstorm. Although thunderstorms are a summertime phenomenon, she noted, in some rare situations a winter thundersnow can occur. Typically, after about an hour the storm becomes dominated by downward motion and an ordinary storm ends, said Richardson. The accompanying boom, called thunder, comes from sound waves created when the air is heated suddenly by the lightning and then cools rapidly. The result? A high voltage surge of electrons, otherwise known as lightning. Consequently, the ground becomes positively charged and the electric field cuts a conductive path between the cloud and the Earth. This "charge separation" grows more intense with each collision inside the cloud - so intense, in fact, that the negative charge at the cloud's lower end actually repels electrons at the Earth's surface deeper into the planet. The ice crystals rise upward, carrying a positive electric charge to the cloud's upper end. The hailstones fall to the lower portion of the cloud, giving it a negative charge. Most importantly, hailstones and ice particles collide with each other, transferring charge in the process. Heavy droplets of water and ice particles darken the cloud and spread out horizontally to transform the fluffy cumulus shape into a cumulonimbus - or "anvil-cloud," so named for its typical shape, flattened at its top with a heavy base. As the cumulus cloud grows higher and bigger, the moist air inside of it accelerates upward until it reaches a level where it is colder than the surrounding air. This buoyant air rises quickly, starting the formation of the thunderstorm. Explained Richardson, "The warmed air in the cloud is less dense than the surrounding air, making it buoyant." This heat further warms the air, ultimately creating low hanging cumulus clouds - the clouds that resemble fluffy cotton balls. As these updrafts of heated air rise, they carry along water vapor, which - as the warm air ascends and cools - condenses into liquid, releasing latent heat. Thunderstorms literally begin at the ground level: The sun's rays are absorbed by the Earth, which warms the air above it. "It is harder to get all of these to come together in the winter." "Any thunderstorm requires moisture, instability and some mechanism for lifting, such as a front," Richardson continued. The short answer? "In the summer there's a lot more moisture in the air," said Yvette Richardson, assistant professor of meteorology at Penn State.
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