Just saw lightning, In the middle of winter!

This is really an interesting phenomenon to me, I have never seen lightning in the middle of winter. I live in newmarket and I just went out for a cigarette, whilst upon the porch i saw a few flashes of lightning.
Does anybbody have any idea what this means exactly, could this and other weather related oddities be linked to something more.

I think lightning in the middle of winter is pretty significant to mark something is occuring!

Open for input though!

It's freezing rain here in Toronto, with lots of lightning in the sky.

The only time I've seen lightning during an out and out SNOW storm was about 5 years back during Torontos really bad snow storm. That was an amazing sight to see it with the wind swirling the snow around and the snow coming down in thick blankets.

It was lovely.

I think you can have lightning in winter almost as easily as in warm months.
It's jsut tha most of our cold weather isn't as violent as our warm weather.
It's not as common, but it happens. We've had a lot of strong systems coming through the midwest during this winter.

Nothing weird about it. IMHO.

Not uncommon, Thundersnow is a normal occurance in heavy winter storms. You can on a rare occasion even have a tornado with it hammering down snow.

its thundersnow from snow rubbing up agianst eachother and creating a electric charge witch is often seen in the mountins and dry climates.... EX. AZ

Originally posted by Magickesists
This is really an interesting phenomenon to me, I have never seen lightning in the middle of winter. I live in newmarket and I just went out for a cigarette, whilst upon the porch i saw a few flashes of lightning.
Does anybbody have any idea what this means exactly, could this and other weather related oddities be linked to something more.

I think lightning in the middle of winter is pretty significant to mark something is occuring!

Open for input though!

Your more than likely seeing lightning because its an aftermath of the major snow storm the hit the west cost of the usa at the weekend.

Its because the stom was so big it had a lot of build up of energy in it.. Hence the lightning..

engenerQ
Sorry but there was no snow it was all freezing rain.

Either way I' astounded, Never seen lighning while it was freezing rain, it's totally new to me. More often than not when i have seen lightning it's been in the middle of summer when warm air updrafts are prevalent and cause air to rise into cumulous* (*If I spelt this wrong forgive me!*) clouds. Usually the massize amount of water vapour and dust inside one of these clouds is enough to cause a major electrical charge between the ground and the cloud.

However last night i believe the clouds resembled nimbo stratus clouds. low lying very heavy dark clouds. I watched them drift in earlier during the day and they were not tall clouds either.
So where does a nimbo stratus cloud find the static charge to emit lightning at least once every 4 minutes, in the middle of winter, when at least a third of the precipitation in the cloud is forzen.

Could the frozen water actually be playing a part in giving this not normally charged cloud a charge?

I live in manchester and iv seen quite a few occasions where freezing rain/hail is accompanied by lightning, not fork lightning, i usually find that after a flash and a rumble of thunder the hail seems to ease then comes down twice as hard. Infact it happened today only one flash and only lasted for about 5 mins mind,

Well, I don't really recall thunder and lightening in the winter when I was in some of my younger years.

I think it may be a relatively new occurance for some people?

Troy

I have never had thunder and lightning in snowstorms or winter untlil the last 5 years or so. For us up here in Canada, it seems to have been almost unheard of unless you were in the southern parts of the country. Weather seems to be changing and very wonky. Last night it was thunderstorms with severe lightning with temps around 8 degrees C. By morning it was 10 degrees C. By evening it was -12 degrees C with wind chills lower than -23 degrees. All in the space of 24 hours.

definitely wonky

Yeah the weather is becoming too variant to be normal, How badly is global warming and haarp and all that stuff actually affecting the planet?
It seems to me the weather is proves pretty critical evidence we're messing our planet up.

I was watching daily planet last night and it was explaining these things called sprites. Anyway they occur when an extremely powerful lightning strike occurs lower in the atmosphere. In the upper atmosphere the elctrical charge balances it's self and there's a flash o lighning above the thunder cloud check it out!
Sprites, blue jets and elves?

Magickesists

intresting your blaming a documented weather event on global warming and humans. humans have theis need to justify there exsistance and it occures in funny ways such as ppl blaming strong hurracanes on humans and droughts. thundersnow is a real event that has gon on for as long as there has been snow. just becaus i havent seen china dosnet mean it dosent exsist and americans made ramen. it is foolhardy to blame humans for weather for we cant even predict 24hrs in to the future with relative cerntany.

here is a link to explane to you all how and why it hapens
www.nytimes.com...

Yes your more than right engeneer. I have an overactive imagination though.

I haven't really studied too hard on this subject to come to any conclusions of human involvement. So, I apologize deeply and sincerely.

However, You can't rule out that the frequency of hurricanes was a bit odd this year and the paths similartiies. Not to mention the whacky weather going on up here in canada. There was like a foot and a half of snow in vancouver in november, that's an oddity according to the locals.
also the rapid temperature fluxations in north american daily life lately. Plus there's a few places where ocean currents have died down in flow, lost or gained temerature, and i'm not sure but possibly even some may have reversed in the last few years.

If I may throw something in the open too, The U.S. has been testing weather related frequencies with haarp. Don't tell me that that isn't a possible factor in intensificaton of storms or possibly some destabilizing of the ionosphere and such.

Originally posted by parrhesia
It's freezing rain here in Toronto, with lots of lightning in the sky.

The only time I've seen lightning during an out and out SNOW storm was about 5 years back during Torontos really bad snow storm. That was an amazing sight to see it with the wind swirling the snow around and the snow coming down in thick blankets.

It was lovely.

I remember that. I was coming home from a Leafs game and the snow was REALLY coming down, then lightning. I'd never seen anything like that before or since. Freaky.

yeah it's odd weather all right.

Ok, what if this can all be attributed to partly global warming but it's actually one of the side effects of global warming that causes it. the melting of the polar ice caps.
Significantly raising the level of the sea over a period of years and also bringing the temperature down by however many degrees may affect air currents.
I was looking at the jet stream and it seem to be in a very fluctuating mood as well as weakening. possibly due to this previous idea.
There is also some beach somewhere that was famous for it's surfing waves and all of a sudden no more waves.


There's evidence something isn't right with the planet, I can't be the first to think of this.