violent electrical storms in california

Even a veteran weather watcher and former Midswesterner was impressed with the lightning. Citrus Heights resident Joe Cronin, who retired from the National Weather Service in Sacramento in 1993, worked for many years as a government meteorologist in Green Bay, Wis. He's seen his share of thunderstorms here and in Wisconsin -- but last night was something to behold. "It was the most impressive display of lightning I have ever seen," Cronin said. "That storm was unique -- just so much lightning. Vivid displays. It was so extended. A lot of time in the Midwest you will have a cold frontal passage with good, strong thunderstorms with it. But they move through. There was more lightning last night than I have ever seen before."

source
map of strikes

amazing picture slideshow


i spent summers in tempe, arizona when i was young...and i LOVED monsoon season. lightning is beautiful. i loved nothing more than dancing in the hot summer rain watching the lightning listening to the thunder. i say this because, as the quote above, i have NEVER seen a thunderstorm like this.

the first one that blew through barely got us but we could see it going by with the lightning, we watched for a long time. then we went to sleep as they said that was it for the night, as far as lightning...well it woke me from my sleep later.

i was trying to get some video of it but i was too scared to even go outside with the camera...in fact i was too scared to go out my front door. thunder felt like it actually shook the ground and it definitely shook the walls and the windows. you could hear the storm coming and sometimes the lightning was so immense that the whole sky just lit up and you couldn't see anything but light. it was just a constant stream of lightning and the thunder didn't come just in booms, it was a constant rumble...with occasional booms of thunder. and i don't know if this is possible or common, but i think i could actually hear electricity from the lightning it was so big and close. literally over head. scary stuff.

the reason i'm posting is, IS THIS NORMAL????

i don't ever remember storms like this in sacramento, this was even more fierce than the most violent monsoon i've seen in arizona.
though there was very little rain and in arizona it dumps.
also, the first storm was semi-close...close enough i think thunder should have been present, but no thunder...just lightning and a light wind.

i remember this sparked huge fires last year...and i thought the same thing...
uncharacteristic for this region and especially this time of year!

what could the uses be for causing these storms or would lightning be a by-product of some other meddling? Haarp? but why?

Yea, I saw this storm, I live right next to Citrus Heights. The guy isn't lying it was damn impressive, coolest thing I've ever seen without a doubt. It was like a war was going on out there... I just turned off the lights and watched the storm out the window for about an hour.

This type of weather definitely isn't normal. I remember checking accuweather.com and we set a record for rain fall amount for that day.... Funny thing is, it only rained for about 8 - 10 mins ... Crazy stuff.

The lightening strom last week was preety impressive, certainly out of character for cali this time of year. Later in the summer and at higher altitudes t storms are preety common and fierce, its just most people never see them.

I was once invited to spend a stormy night inside the fire lookout at Shuteye Pk in madera county, its the most lightning struck place in cali.
It has 6 #0000(3/4" cable) ground wires grounding the lightning rod.
All of the furniture is on those old stlye glass insulators on a 1" thick rubber floor.
When a lightning storm hits the oberserver puts his wooden glass insulated chair in the center of the room and squats on the balls of his feet on the chair till the strom passes.
I passed on the offer.
The top of the mtn is covere with wood "shrapnel" from the exploded struck trees.

The lookout at 8358' above sea level.On the left yoiu can see one of the ground wires.


looking north at mammoth mtn, its the cone ish looking mtn to the right in the background.



and looking at the south border of yosemite NP.

reply to post by double_frick

The lightning storm certainly looks very impressive.
Weather patterns throughout the world are going through catastrophic change at the moment--whether it be global warming or not.
There have been records broken all over the world in the past year on extreme rainfall events, record breaking temperatures,droughts, tornado events and increased winds etc.
IMO the planet's self-regulatory system seems to be in turmoil and struggling to cope.
Extreme weather will certainly increase in the near future and intense lightning will be part of the dramatic climate change.

does anyone know what would happen if lightning struck bark ground cover? would it like, melt it together? or is that even possible for it to strike bark like that...when there is play equipment 10 feet away?

i forgot that the last couple days they have been dumping chemtrails all over sacramento...
my boyfriend and i even saw a low flying plane with brown trails...
at any rate...it would make sense that more chemtrails in the air would make the atmosphere more conducive to electrical storms...

i'm thinking haarp. but why? maybe just to see that they CAN or tweaking it? i dunno...strange stuff.

i did some research, and so far it seems that lightning is relatively light in this area....so this storm and the storm last year that started all the fires, are out of character for the region.

though i'm not sure about the haarp aspect, i must say. it could very well be the massive earth changes that are upon us...
thank god i am getting outta here...

reply to post by punkinworks09


how do you get invited to that?
i think i would...i do love lightning.
though i didn't know how scary it was...or how scared it could make me, i guess...until last night.

These Lightning Storms have been traveling up the West Coast in a northerly direction. We've had them here in Southern Oregon/Northernmost California every day for the past 6 days non-stop. It's not unusual for us to get Lightning Storms come late August when the high temperatures clash with Low Pressure fronts moving in off the Pacific ocean, but it is unusual to get them this early in the summer. It's also unusual to have them back to back as they have been these past 6 days.

Actually, the whole year has been the wettest we've had (having snowed or rained almost every day this year), which is ironic because we are facing the worst potential drought this summer that the Western States have ever had!

Still, it's nice to watch 300+ lightning strikes per minute and hear the crackle of rolling thunder every second. Thankfully our Lightning Storms aren't as violent as they usually are in the Midwest.

It just makes you scratch your head when the birds start flocking to fly south in June and all the animals are hoarding food like they are getting ready for winter.

[edit on 4-6-2009 by fraterormus]

I have lived in Sacramento, CA for more than 50 years. I have NEVER seen an electrical storm like that in all those years,

It was beatutiful. It was exciting. It was frightening.

And it has left me with a mixed sense of foreboding and curiousity.



All I could think of last night as the storm raged, seemingly endlessly, was the opening of an old Sci-Fi movie;

"Day of The Triffids"



"By the prickling of my thumbs, something Wicked this way comes..."

reply to post by double_frick


Odd, I've been getting a bit of a storm up here in portland. Not too bad though, just flickering lights, and the power went out for a minute.

Severe thunderstorm in Portland right now. The radar is really impressive to watch. Crazy weather this year.

Wasn't that something?! Very impressive light show indeed! I went out on my balcony to get a nice view when it first came in, but as soon as I set foot outside... BOOM! (I went running back inside like a complete wuss of course).

It seemed to just come out of nowhere and then we were surrounded by wind, pounding rain, and back to back lightening strikes. I was amazed by how frequent the lightening strikes were. Then around midnight, round two came and we got to go through it all again...

Several strikes came close to home too, and car alarms were going off left and right all throughout the neighborhood lol.

theres a pretty good lightning show goin on right
now. It just blew in.
This is very unusual for this time of year.

Strangely enough we had one here in Cape Town last week as well. It was the most violent electric storm I've experienced in my entire life (I'm 41). The bolts were thicker than I've ever seen and the thunder was louder than I've ever heard (in my memory). It was beautiful but it worried me a bit.

reply to post by fraterormus


Would you be able to get pictures of the animals hoarding? Thanks.

We can get storms like this in TN, but the weather pattern seems to have shifted about 3 wks. We seem to be recovering from a 3 yr. drought.

I think as we get closer to the end of our Julian calendar, there will continue to be changes in the seasonal patterns. However, I do believe there is global warming/climate change/earth's self-biofeedback.

reply to post by double_frick


Double_frick -great post
Theres an ultra slow motion video of a lighting strike
here -crazy stuff!
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Cheers.

Originally posted by punkinworks09
theres a pretty good lightning show goin on right
now. It just blew in.
This is very unusual for this time of year.

what is especially suspect NOW is the storm over the Sonora area and the storm waiting in the pacific ocean...its just been sitting stationery for about a day....
i remember talking to someone well versed in weather maninpulation...this was last year when these strange storms showed up. he said that whenever you see a storm hover above an area instead of flowing (as a natural storm would) then to assume its haarp and weather modification.
i definitely believe that is what it is now...seeing the weather that has decided to just sit over regions yesterday and is just now deciding to make its way through the rest of california.

Ok, gotta share this. Tuesday, June second in the afternoon, I was driving my kids home (we are in So. Cal) and noticed funny clouds. My kids are very used to me noticing things in the sky. Anyway, there were these clouds that looked like dripping dotted lines. I've never seen anything like them. We tried to take a picture by camera phone, but they didn't show much. There were like 4 dotted lines one on top of the other making a rectangle and they looking like they were dripping or oozing downward. My kids ask "what do you think mom?" I told them cloud seeding, then forgot all about it. The next day, Wednesday during this electrical storm, my kid comes home from school and says "Mom, you were right!, When do we ever have rain in June?" He was spot on. We have had more cloud covered days here than I can ever remember. I am keeping track, somewhat.

Originally posted by winotka
Would you be able to get pictures of the animals hoarding? Thanks.

I will try and get some pictures of the birds flocking and animals hoarding this weekend.

Here is a picture of the storm on Sunday here in Southern Oregon (the Thunderstorms have been non-stop every day since then)



We have an unusually large Robin who nests on our porch every year (our pet Budgie that is inside right near the porch mimics the Robin's calls when he hears her, so I think that's probably why she returns year after year...they probably are friends and share gossip). Last year we found it odd because she laid her 4 eggs in mid-June and 2 weeks later both she and her 3 babies were gone (apparently one of the eggs didn't make it). She returned this year, made another nest in early May and only laid 2 eggs this year. They already hatched a couple weeks ago and the babies are already as large as her. It looks like they are getting ready to leave again. (I wish my Budgie would speak English so he could tell me what's going on, but I've never had any success in getting him to talk, even though they have an amazing capacity for language comprehension...better than humans!)

The Scrub-Jays are still mating, so they're probably going to stick around, but most of them don't usually migrate South as our climate is so mild year round.

The Blackbirds and Starlings, however, are the ones that are flocking en mass, going from tree to tree rounding each other up. They didn't do this until mid-July last year, which was far earlier than previous years (and sure enough Winter did come in mid-September and was much harsher than previous years). Previous to last year they didn't start flocking until mid-September.

Regardless of whether these daily electrical storms which are happening 3 months earlier than usual is caused by Global Climatic Change or by HARP, the animals are certainly taking notice and changing their ways as well.

Wow! You guys were right!
Same thing here. Highly unsusual weather.
Its all good, it's nothing......

2 dead, 7 injured in California lightning storm

Northern California received more than 1,000 lightning strikes from Wednesday night into Thursday morning, the weather service said.

www.breitbart.com...

Violent electrical storm in Oklahoma early morning hours of the 4th was the most amazing and scary storm that I have ever been in. It started just as day broke and the I checked the online doppler and a range of storms had appeared out of nowhere, a thin bank going across the entire n to s diameter of the state. When I awoke, the thunder actually sounded like bombs going off that the flash of lightening would coorelate with the exact sound of the boom. The house would shake and the the ground would shake. The scary part was not only the geographical way that the storm showed itself in the state, but also that the lightening was so intense and that their was no rolling thunder up in the sky. It was just the clap noises that came from the ligtening bolt hitting the ground. When I looked out the window, there was no clouds over my house, just a weird fog. It was spooky. I grew up in Oklahoma but I have also lived for about 10 years in the mountains of Arizona. I have never, never seen any type of storm like this before. I think something different is going on and I definitely think that we need to understand lightening better for the future. These storms are getting more violent and man have developed no way to be safe from these electrical bombs dropping from the sky.