Scientist To Tackle "Thundersnow" Rarity - Another Great Use Of Tax Dollars

Red Nova News - AP ^ | November 12, 2003 | BILL DRAPER

[Damocles]

Scientist To Tackle "Thundersnow" Rarity

By BILL DRAPER

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Sometimes in the middle of a Midwestern snowstorm, thunder growls and lightning sends dull flashes among the clouds.

A University of Missouri researcher has received a $460,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to find out when and why.

Missouri scientist Patrick Market said for the past four years he's been looking into a phenomenon known as thundersnow, an apparently rare event that some researchers believe foreshadows an intense snowstorm with heavy accumulation.

Part of his five-year study, which began in July, will try to determine whether thundersnow is rare or just doesn't get reported much.

"One of the questions I'd like to answer precisely is how rare it is," Market said. "Some of it may actually go undetected."

A thundersnow storm Jan. 17, 1994, in Louisville, Ky., dropped about 2 feet of snow, Market said. The center of the storm - a narrow band that contained thunder and lightning - went directly over Louisville, where the biggest accumulation was recorded.

A year later, in January 1995, the same happened in Columbia, Mo., he said. Thundersnow was reported over the city, where the harshest part of the storm hit.

"The kicker here is that the lines of snow were pretty narrow," Market said. "If you took the same band of snowfall 20 miles north of Louisville, or bump the one that fell on Columbia over a little so it affected Sedalia instead, it becomes more of a footnote and doesn't grab as much attention."

Thundersnow is more likely to happen around the Great Lakes because of instability caused by the "lake effect," Market said. However, the study he is concentrating more on non-lake effect thundersnow that occurs in a loose arc across the central U.S.

States where thundersnow is most frequently reported are Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and into northern Texas, Market said.

A priority of the study will be to find ways to forecast thundersnow. Market and a team of students will make about three or four road trips each winter to chase major snowstorms in search of the elusive thundersnow.

Greg Koch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, Mo., said forecasting thundersnow would greatly help meteorologists understand where the biggest accumulations might hit.

"Thundersnow oftentimes is very small-scale phenomena which can lead to wide variations in snow amounts in very small area," Koch said.

Market is trying to enlist the help of anyone with Internet access who witnesses lightning in a winter snowstorm. He has set up a Web site where people can fill out a form and write what they remember.

The next step, he said, would be to look at what causes thundersnow, such as updrafts similar to those found in summer storms.

[Damocles]

Honestly, is this a needed scientific endeavor? Thundersnow?

[KarlInOhio]

It's important to find out if it is safe to golf during a blizzard.

[Wright is right!]

It's not something you see every winter, but one year when I was stationed in Detroit, I went home one evening and witnessed a snow thunderstorm for the best part of a half-hour. It's something to see. But, like regular liquid thunderstorms, the effects upon accumulation are fleeting. Yes, you get very heavy snowfall RATES, but they don't last long. We got maybe 5 inches out of that storm, a yawner by Michigan standards.

Michael

[boris]

Partygoer to J.B.S. Haldane, Jr.: "I understand your father did some work on ball lightning."

J.B.S. Jr: "Actually, ball lightning did some work on my father."

[DK Zimmerman]

I wouldn't hazard a guess about its frequency in the mid-west, but it is fairly common in Germany. What a waste of money, unless of course it gets this (incompetent?) loon out of country for a really long time.

[Damocles]

Yeah, I live in Michigan as well, and if I remember correctly we had one a couple years ago.

Very cool, but not worth $460,000.

[dirtboy]

Honestly, is this a needed scientific endeavor? Thundersnow?

Back in 1987 in the Philadelphia suburbs, a late winter storm was forecast to drop 4-8 inches. We instead got a thundersnow event and got 21 inches, in a narrow band, which was a major surprise that caught local municipalities off-guard. So this is a potentially signficant weather issue that merits study.

[ChemistCat]

Forecasting how much snow is going to fall is harder than forecasting how much rain will fall, and just as economically important. I don't know about most regions, but Oklahoma's snowfalls NEVER seem to match predictions. Sometimes they are not even close. And it really matters. People die when things aren't closed and they should be. Businesses fail when things are closed down and they didn't need to be.

Shame on the journalist for the way the cost of this study is highlighted. It's important when you throw money facts around that you put them into context. One heavy snowstorm in a major metropolitian area costs far more than $460K. Planning for winter snow handling is a major portion of state and local budgets across the country. We ran out of salt and gravel a couple of winters ago here in our area. I can tell you that the results weren't pretty.

If you've ever had an expensive plan ruined by a bad weather forecast, you'd rethink your opinion on weather research.

[Damocles]

Fine, then get a private grant...

[gathersnomoss]

"So this is a potentially signficant weather issue that merits study."

Well then, maybe you should be the one to "fund" this study.
"Hey, you, get off my wallet".

[dirtboy]

Fine, then get a private grant...

I didn't say it merits public funding, only that it is not a trivial phenomenon.

[ChemistCat]

Who pays for snow removal where you live? Or do you not have that problem where you live?

You think citizens should own their own plows and salt trucks, and get off your wallet?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Absurd.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I like the idea of private funding. Then the funding company can sell the results to farmers, cities, airlines, that may wish to have a weather prediction. (And refuse to sell to their competitors.) Perhaps the drug companies would be a good model.

Sounds like a really cheap research project though.

[Damocles]

Yeah, that's a great distinction.

A common, recurring problem based on pulic safety vs. an extremely rare, isolated phenomenon based on scientific curiosity.

I live in Michigan, and we usually have winter around here. If some university wants to study a cool yet infrequent weather phenomenon to furhter the knowledge of science, then get a private grant.

That is the problem with dining at the Government trough, everyone has their pet project that they deem extremely important and nothing gets cut.

[dirtboy]

Perhaps the drug companies would be a good model.

The drug companies get a lot of public funding for their research, so that isn't exactly the best model. I think Accuweather is a better model - where a private company provides a better quality of forecast than the public services. However, much of the data that Accuweather uses is gathered by the government, so that in turn isn't a pure privatization model.

[per loin]

A half million to study thundersnow makes a lot more sense to me than $15 billion to Africa for AIDS, or building roads and sewers in Islamic countries.

[general_re]

When I was in upstate NY, we used to see these every so often, maybe once every winter or two. It's kind of neat when it happens at night, actually - it's accompanied by fairly heavy snowfall, of course, and the snow and the clouds diffuse and diffract the light from the lightning bolts in such a way that the whole sky lights up with a very interesting pale pinkish-orange color.

[Damocles]

Actually all those make exactly the same amount of sense to me...ZERO.

[general_re]

It's important to find out if it is safe to golf during a blizzard.

It is. Golf balls that are colored safety-orange are an enormous help, though.