Why doesn it thunder and lightning during winter snow storms?
Actually it does. We typically can’t hear the thunder because it does not travel as far in the cold dense air as it would in the summer. Therefore we would have to be very close to the source to hear it. Lightning happens as well but it is hard to see because the snow reflects the light from the city where most of us live. This makes it hard to detect brief flashes of lightning in the sky. Why is the shortest day of the year not the coldest day of the year? The middle of January is typically the coldest time of year in Minnesota, but the shortest daylight occurs on Dec. 21. “That is bizarre. Why is that?” asked one viewer. “It all has to do with a lag effect,” said WCCO-TV meteorologist Chris Shaffer. Think of the atmosphere as an oven. It heats up all summer long and takes a long time to cool down. “We’re still losing that heat before we kind of bottom out, which is typically about the midpoint of January,” said Shaffer. The temperature of the atmosphere tends to lag the calendar or s
