Snow squalls (heavier, short bursts of snow) moved through the North Country Thursday morning, beginning around 5:30 a.m. in the St. Lawrence River Valley, pushing across northern New York during the 6 o'clock hour, 7 o'clock hour through Plattsburgh, near 8 a.m. Burlington, then Montpelier and areas southeast of U.S. Rt. 2 through 10 a.m. and a little thereafter.
The forecast was good. I'm pleased to say our forecast called for similar timing and snowfall expectations, as well as wind gusts. I'm not bragging by any means, because I've written blogs about my bust forecasts before too.
It was fun to watch the arctic cold front move through and I hope you were safe watching it pass too. It dropped many area temperatures by more than five degrees in as little as ten minutes.
It also produced lightning!
A big thanks to the meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont for their daily effort. Andy Nash, Meteorologist In Charge, sent me the picture on the left which shows lightning strikes across northern New York Thursday morning. The photo is courtesy Mr. Nash and NOAA/NWS.
They provide images like this on Facebook, which is very helpful before any hazardous weather. Here is their link, be sure to 'like' them:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/US.NationalWeatherService.Burlington.gov?fref=ts
All of those little X's indicate lightning strikes, but not necessarily all of them hit the ground. The information for lightning data comes in for strikes that remain in the clouds. Either way this is very cool to see in the winter, because it generally doesn't happen that often. Lightning occurs when there is a strong difference in negative and positive charge in the atmosphere. This usually occurs with growing cumulonimbus clouds in the summer, but can happen when stronger "vorticity" advects into our area. In other words when a stronger piece of energy moves through, which helps support weather systems like the one we had earlier. Hope you got to hear some thunder! I didn't hear of any other reports of this happening in Vermont and New Hampshire at the time when I wrote this blog.
-Meteorologist Steve Glazier
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