Miners Trapped by Lightning?
The media are reporting that 13 coal miners were trapped in a mine by an explosion this morning in Tallmansville (Upshur County), West Virginia. Purportedly, the explosion was caused by lightning. The time of the explosion was earlier reported at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, then was later reported as "between 6:00 and 6:30" and has most recently been reported as "around 6:30" by a press conference at 4:10 p.m.
As I always do (see JFK Jr. Plane Missing & Northeast Blackout) I want to give you meteorological confirmation (or denial) that the weather could have played a role in this event.
Checking an archive of AccuWeather.com Lightning maps from this morning, the USPLN lightning network did show strikes in the area during that time-frame.
Pulling up archived radar imagery from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus, it looks like the town (shown at the "X" below) was getting pounded by some pretty heavy thunderstorms around 6 a.m.
Radar At 6:03 a.m. This Morning (Tallmansville at X)
Click For Animation (Backup URL)
And finally, accessing the AccuWeather.com LightningPlus archive, we see the individual lightning strikes which hit the ground near Tallmansville, WV near the time of the explosion. Lightning strike data for RadarPlus and LightningPlus is provided by the U.S. Precision Lightning Network.
