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Hi Dina,
Question: Why is it that we rarely see/hear lightning/thunder in winter snow storms? I've only noticed lightning in rain storms. However, I once heard thunder during a snow storm when I was a growing up in Tooele County.
Chris S.
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We must remember that lightning comes from a thunderstorm, and thunderstorms usually need a few things to grow. One of the needs of a thunderstorm is warm air. That warm air rises into cooler air. Ingredients for thundestorms are warm moist air and something to help move that air upward like a front, and if we have nice cool air higher up, that means, that our air will continue to rise and create an even bigger storm.
In the wintertime, especially across Utah, warm humid air just isn't around as much. You can have a thunderstorm and you can have thunderSNOW when the conditions warrant.
Thundersnow occurs when you have a thunderstorm but it's cold enough for snow when that precipitation reaches the ground. During the winter time, we typically do not have the unstable atmosphere we need for thunderstorms (warm air at the surface rising into colder air aloft). You can have thunderstorms with snow but it's not a regular event.
Places that do have more occurences of thundersnow are the Great Lakes and a few other states including Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, northern Texas and Colorado. Like a strong thunderstorm, thundersnow storms can drop hefty snow totals in a short amount of time. Like thunderstorms, thundersnow storms don't last for hours on end on like a regular band of snow, it's more like a quick burst which can drop several inches in an hour.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman
