Thunder God? Sears Tower?
Gizmodo points out an interesting new phenomenon happening as a result of our major cities' penchant for building up into the sky—"Thundersnow". Based on a recent paper,
published in the journal of Geophysical Research, about thundersnow happening during the 2011 Chicago blizzard:
The National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) recorded 282 flashes comprised of 1153 events which were >96% negative polarity. Hopes of imaging winter sprites associated with energetic positive cloud-to-ground events that sometimes accompany such winter storms did not materialize. However, the lack of lightning over the Great Lakes waters, plus media reports of numerous thundersnow events in downtown Chicago, prompted a detailed analysis of the NLDN data. This revealed that >93% of all lightning in the snow band was likely or possibly associated with self-initiated upward lightning (SIUL) events from a variety of tall, and some not so tall, structures. In addition to 43 events from two Chicago skyscrapers, many shorter structures were involved, including wind turbines (13.1% of the total) and transmission line towers (6.7%).
What they believe happened was:
When a tall structure starts to build up a charge, as it might when charged clouds surround it, a corona of ionized air forms around the structure to buffer its electric field. But in this blizzard, high winds blew away the corona, allowing the skyscrapers to accumulate charges more easily. Hence, thundersnow.
Dinosaurs may be 5,000 years old and climate change might be a huge black-ops level conspiracy by hippies but we can agree that this thundersnow was man-made, right?
This video is just funny. Below the fold is a little more peaceful, though from what I've heard, thundersnow can be pretty intense and scary.