Severe Thunderstorms, From A Distance
(ONE YEAR AGO: The Weather At Woodstock)
When I visited Oak Island, North Carolina earlier this month, I was thrilled to see a thunderhead from about 80 miles away. I attributed it to the flat land, good visibility (due to a frontal passage), and strong storms that take place there (conditions almost as good as you'd see in the Plains). But even here in Pennsylvania you can experience that when conditions are just right -- and it happened yesterday, to the surprise of local residents. At 8 PM I took this photo when the sun lit up the storms to my southeast:
Locals without the mountain or trees in front got an even better show. Frank Strait got a better picture from AccuWeather HQ and points out that the storms showed up on radar as having the top of their significant rain at 43,000 feet; the cloud tops were no doubt even higher. The radar at the time looked like this:
After the sun set, lightning could be seen lighting up the clouds and occasionally sparking out of them. It was quite a show to witness, but I only managed to get one (admittedly not very good) photo:
Here's a radar shot from when that photo was taken. The unusual event was made possible by those high cloud tops and unusually clear visibility for the time of year in which you'd get storms to tower that high -- a cold front had passed through behind them, clearing dust and haze from the air.
SIDENOTE: When you can't see the clouds, but only flashes from lightning, people call it "heat lightning."
The storms' height indicated their strength -- and according to reports from Pennsylvania Storm Chasers Facebook Group they were strong indeed, with Mike B. reporting a funnel cloud under a Tornado Warning. Indeed, several reports of funnel clouds, high winds, large hail and flooding were reported underneath a flurry of Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings:
