Saturday, December 15, 2007

First Reports of Thunder Snow in Illinois

Well we have been talking about this for much of the evening. This low pressure is rapidly deepening and is almost acting like a nor'easter would off the East Coast. Its pressure is already down to 29.47" on the home barometer and losing 15 inches per hour which is very impressive for the Midwest. This rapid deepening is causing a chain reaction in the atmosphere to take place with thunder snow now being reported. It is a pretty rare phenomenon here in the Midwest. It only happens here in Lafayette probably about once every five years and is a sign of a very intense storm.

I think we have a real good shot of thunder snow here in Indiana after midnight. So if you hear something that sounds like thunder it probably is and it causes intense snow rates to break out just like you would have heavy downpours with summer thunderstorms. No, we do not have the intense heat and humidity that causes a volatile atmosphere but we have an intense storm. I just got a call from Ed in Georgia who had never heard of this. Welcome to Indiana. I told him the only thing we will not see weatherwise is a hurricane or tropical storm, but we have everything else imaginable. I will post all your new snow totals in the next hour. Our weather team will be here throughout the night. Snow totals in Illinois are up to 7 inches in some spots and that heavier snow is moving our way. I need to get out and measue. At last check we were at 3 inches here at the station and my daughter Megan just called in 2.5 inches of snow on the south side of Lafayette.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update Mike!! I would love it if we had Thundersnow I have never experienced that. My husband and I just moved to Lafayette in April from Southern Indiana and rarely got much snow. I am excited to see how it turns out. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

It seems like this storm is coming from the SSW, do we expect the direction to change during the night?

Anonymous said...

We just heard thunder off and on for about 5 minutes here in Williamsport--right around 12:30.

Traci Latoz

Anonymous said...

I would just like to say that I used to reside in Suthern Indiana, down on the border on the Ohio by Louisville, and actually we experienced hurricanes in INDIANA, I know bizarre. But the hurricane last year (Sept 09) moved up through the US and while we didn't receive rain, we received up to 70mph winds caused by the hurricane. Everyone lost power in the surrounding area for a week (and up to a month). So, yeah, even hurricanes hit Indiana.