Today I woke up to what I thought was the sound of a fighter jet taking off. I went to the window to find that it looked like a blizzard outside, and that it wasnt an aircraft but thunder rumbling in the distance. Becca sent a message over chat while at the NWS office saying it was thunder snow. I got really excited, Ive never heard it that obvious, it was a crack of a CG (cloud to ground) that you would hear in a thunderstorm.
For our first snow in Cheyenne, this is pretty intense. We have had power surges and outages at times today.Becca Mazur said two days ago on her Facebook Status
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The end of this week has been busy in the WX world. And she was right we were chasing on Thursday in Wyoming not far from where these snow pictures were taken. We were on nearly tornadic storms with lightning, hail, very strong winds, and heavy rain just 48 hours ago.
This Picture below was of the storm we chased Thursday near Chugwater WY, this area was rotating and had a gustanado underneath with lightning.
Just yesterday chasers drove from many places to Kansas to get some October Storm chasing action. Here is a picture from Colt Forney near Holcomb, KS of a beautiful supercell at dusk.
Earlier this week Skinner and I were chating on Skype about this system that was on its way. He told me look at 300mb winds. I opened up the models and immediate replied holy crap. He then said "thats what I said". It was looking to be an interesting week in October for sure.
I know some Meteorologists that would kill to be in Cheyenne today to witness the Thunder snow, and document it. Some of them are doing grad research on this topic. It is a rare thing to hear lightning while it is snowing. And not far from Cheyenne it doesnt look like the winter wonderland. In Nebraska there are thunderstorms and rain. And Travis Knudsen our Met at KGWN CBS 5 was driving south of WY/CO Border and reported HAIL!
Becca measuring 6" of Snow at 4:45pm MST
