Inversion thunder

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Richard
Posts: 8578
Joined: Tue 14/07/2009 07:32
Location: Medbury, Inland North Canterbury

Inversion thunder

Unread post by Richard »

The thunder my family and I experienced yesterday will be one we wont ever forget. The whole storm event lasted about an hour in duration, all the lighting above us was all Intercloud that extending out over all the Amuri plains back to the ground striking along the foot hills, there would have been about 20 -30 strikes over that period. But the last strike, I didnt see the bolt but instead just a bright flesh, followed 3 seconds later by cluster of booms, we think there was 6 booms over 1 to 2 seconds. After doing some research on Inversion thunder I dont think that this was because this wasn't cloud-to-ground lightning and I dont think there would have been an inversion layer between ground and cloud, it was quite windy at the time. What I think happened was, if I had seen the lightning it would have like an arm with fingers extending out in different direction, the time delay for the sound from each of the fingers of lightning to reach us would explain the gaps in the thunder, this then followed on to that normal deep window rattling thunder to our west.

So, has anyone experienced anything similar to this? what a way to break a 22month lightning drought for here.

https://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/syd ... ble/526420
Cyclone Tracy
Posts: 2488
Joined: Thu 07/09/2017 19:25
Location: North Shore, Auckland

Re: Inversion thunder

Unread post by Cyclone Tracy »

Well described Richard, sounds very entertaining. I just had a look at some weather balloon data from yesterday and the GFS simulated soundings. There was a small temperature increase between 800 and 700 hPa yesterday afternoon and evening in your region. Not to say you had inversion thunder but it was certainly a chance if a crawler reached down. My experience with inversion thunder is its loud continuous booms with windows rattling longer than normal.


FYI - I also remember analysing an event off Dunedin this year that fitted a inversion thunder scenario.

https://www.weatherforum.nz/phpBB3/view ... er#p182041