Deth

Yesterday’s warmth and strong southerly winds brought some evening thunderstorms. It had been cloudy most of the day with south easterly winds increasing throughout the day and especially in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon the clouds broke with the sun coming fully with the mostly clear skies. The temperature quickly rose into the mid 70s ℉.

The radar had been showing a nice looking line of thunderstorms in west central Pennsylvania with them slowly building through the afternoon. By later in the afternoon it was looking like a really good squall line with severe thunderstorm warnings raised for pretty strong winds. I would have bet money on some really strong gusts here with the winds being mixed down with no rain.

Around sunset the first line of severe warned thunderstorms moved into the Mount Joy area. Here we really didn’t have any wind at all with them. As a matter of fact wind wise it was the calmest part of the day. An hour or two before the line moved in the wind just basically stopped.

They did bring some occasional lightning and very heavy rain for a few minutes. The lightning wasn’t what I would really consider frequent but there were periods of multiple flashes a minute with a few fairly close ones. There were some nice bolts traveling across the base of the clouds. It’s not like there’s a lot of latent heat in the atmosphere this time of the year to really drive the updrafts like there is during the summer.

A few hours later I got woken up around 11:15 PM by thunder. That storm featured quite a bit more lightning and the lightning seemed to be much closer. It of course brought more heavy rain but didn’t seem to be quite as heavy as the earlier storm. There was also a little more wind with that one. Nothing strong or anything like that but there was a breeze unlike the earlier storms. Earlier it was basically dead calm with the actual storms.

Just a few days ago we were having a snow squall warning. Welcome to Spring here in Central Pennsylvania. I guess I can’t complain too much about the storms being a bit underwhelming. It was nice to have some thunder and lightning again.

I am hopeful that these early thunderstorms this year are a sign of things to come later in the spring and summer. If I have to tolerate the heat then a good storm always makes it seem to be a little more worthwhile. I guess time will tell. It’s like like there’s a choice in the matter.