A lot of you may have heard it yesterday...it's a pretty rare phenomenon in weather...THUNDER SNOW! Us meteorologists geek out over it, but even many of you, the general public, also LOVE IT! Areas in southern Indiana got to experience it, some for the first time, yesterday. Here's a video of it happening:
HOLY COW!! https://t.co/VKJLdTSmuy
— Bryce Jones (@BryceJonesWx) February 3, 2026
Pretty cool right? It had all of us, and maybe you, feeling like this...
So....what is it?
It's basically just a thunderstorm, but instead of rain it's snow. In the summer warm air rises from the ground to create and feed the thunderstorm. Here's a simple, visual explanation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In the winter the air is cold and more dense, so it has trouble rising the same way. Instead you need even colder, denser air to move in over top of that surface layer to create the friction needed to develop the thunder and lightning. That's why thundersnow is pretty rare; it takes a specific set of circumstances all coming together in the right way to make this happen. Thunder also sounds different in the cold, dense air with snow falling than it does in the summer.
