Why is there no thunderstorm in winter? Description, photo and video. Why there is no thunderstorm in winter Snowstorm in Russia

People have always paid great attention to thunderstorms. It was they who were associated with most of the dominant mythological images, conjectures were built around their appearance. Science understood this relatively recently - in the 18th century. Many are still tormented by the question: why is there no thunderstorm in winter? We will deal with this later in the article.

How does a thunderstorm happen?

This is where ordinary physics comes into play. A thunderstorm is a natural phenomenon in the layers of the atmosphere. It differs from an ordinary downpour in that during any thunderstorm, strongest electrical discharges occur, uniting cumulus rain clouds with each other or with the ground. These discharges are also accompanied by loud sounds of thunder. The wind often intensifies, sometimes reaching a squall-hurricane threshold, hail is falling. Shortly before the start, the air, as a rule, becomes stuffy and humid, reaching a high temperature.

Thunderstorm types

There are two main types of thunderstorms:

intramass;

frontal.

Intra-mass thunderstorms occur as a result of abundant heating of the air and, accordingly, the collision of hot air near the earth's surface with cold air above. Because of this feature, they are quite strictly tied to the time and, as a rule, begin in the afternoon. They can also pass over the sea at night, while moving over the surface of the water that gives off heat.

Frontal thunderstorms occur when two air fronts - warm and cold - collide. They do not have a definite dependence on the time of day.

The frequency of thunderstorms depends on the average temperatures in the region where they occur. The lower the temperature, the less often they will happen. At the poles, they can be found only once every few years, and they end extremely quickly. Indonesia, for example, is famous for frequent prolonged thunderstorms, which can begin more than two hundred times a year. They do, however, bypass deserts and other areas where it rarely rains.

Why do thunderstorms happen?

The key reason for the origin of a thunderstorm is just the uneven heating of the air. The higher the temperature difference near the ground and at altitude, the stronger and more often thunderstorms will occur. The question remains open: why is there no thunderstorm in winter?

The mechanism of how this phenomenon occurs is as follows: according to the law of heat transfer, warm air from the earth tends upwards, while cold air from the upper part of the cloud, together with the ice particles contained in it, descends. As a result of this cycle, in parts of the cloud that maintain different temperatures, two opposite-pole electric charges arise: positively charged particles accumulate at the bottom, and negatively at the top.

Each time they collide, a huge spark jumps between the two parts of the cloud, which, in fact, is lightning. The sound of the explosion, with which this spark breaks the hot air, is the well-known thunder. The speed of light is faster than the speed of sound, so lightning and thunder do not reach us at the same time.

Types of lightning

Everyone has seen the usual lightning-spark more than once and certainly heard about it. Nevertheless, the whole variety of lightning caused by thunderstorms is not exhausted by this.

There are four main types in total:

Lightning-sparks, beating among the clouds and not touching the ground.
Ribbon, connecting clouds and earth, are the most dangerous lightning that should be feared the most.
Horizontal lightning that cuts through the sky below cloud level. They are considered especially dangerous for the inhabitants of the upper floors, since they can go down quite low, but do not come into contact with the ground.
Ball lightning.

The answer to this question is quite simple. Why is there no thunderstorm in winter? Due to low temperatures near the earth's surface. There is no sharp contrast between the warm air warmed up below and the cold air from the upper atmosphere, so the electrical charge contained in the clouds is always negative. That is why there is no thunderstorm in winter.

Of course, it follows from this that in hot countries, where the temperature remains positive in winter, they continue to occur regardless of the time of year. Accordingly, in the coldest parts of the world, for example, in the Arctic or in Antarctica, a thunderstorm is the greatest rarity, comparable to rain in the desert.

A spring thunderstorm usually begins at the end of March or April, when the snow almost completely melts. Its appearance means that the earth has warmed up sufficiently to give off heat and be ready for crops. Therefore, many folk signs are associated with spring thunderstorms.

An early spring thunderstorm can be harmful to the earth: as a rule, it occurs during abnormally warm days, when the weather has not yet settled down, and brings with it unnecessary humidity. After that, the land is often iced up, it freezes and provides a poor harvest.

Precautions during a thunderstorm

To avoid a lightning strike, you should not stop near high objects, especially single ones - trees, pipes and others. If possible, it is generally better not to be on a hill.

Water is an excellent conductor of electricity, so the first rule for those who are caught in a thunderstorm is not to be in the water. After all, if lightning strikes a pond even at a considerable distance, the discharge will easily reach a person standing in it. The same applies to damp ground, so contact with them should be minimal, and clothing and body should be as dry as possible.

Do not come into contact with household electrical appliances or mobile phones.

If a thunderstorm caught in the car - it is better not to leave it, rubber tires provide good insulation.

Why, why?..

? Why are there no thunderstorms in winter?

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, having written “I love a thunderstorm in early May, / / When the first thunder of spring ...”, obviously also knew that there are no thunderstorms in winter. But why, in fact, they do not happen in winter? To answer this question, let's first look at where electric charges appear in the cloud. The mechanisms of charge separation in the cloud have not yet been fully elucidated, however, according to modern concepts, a thundercloud is a factory for the production of electric charges.

A thundercloud contains a huge amount of vapor, some of which has condensed into tiny droplets or ice floes. The top of a thundercloud can be at a height of 6–7 km, and the bottom hangs over the ground at a height of 0.5–1 km. Above 3–4 km, the clouds consist of ice floes of various sizes; the temperature is always below zero.

The ice particles in the cloud are constantly moving due to the ascending currents of warm air from the heated surface of the earth. At the same time, small ice floes are easier than large ones to be carried away by ascending air currents. "Nimble" small ice floes, moving to the upper part of the cloud, all the time collide with large ones. With each such collision, electrification occurs, in which large pieces of ice are charged negatively, and small ones are positively charged.

Over time, positively charged small pieces of ice are at the top of the cloud, and negatively charged large ones at the bottom. In other words, the top of a thundercloud is positively charged, while the bottom is negatively charged. Thus, the kinetic energy of the ascending air currents is converted into the electrical energy of the separated charges. Everything is ready for a lightning discharge: a breakdown of the air occurs, and a negative charge from the bottom of the thundercloud flows to the ground.

So, in order for a thundercloud to form, ascending currents of warm and moist air are necessary. It is known that the concentration of saturated vapors increases with an increase in temperature and is maximum in summer. The temperature difference, on which ascending air currents depend, is the greater, the higher its temperature at the earth's surface, because. at an altitude of several kilometers, the temperature does not depend on the season. This means that the intensity of the ascending currents is also maximum in summer. Therefore, we have thunderstorms most often in summer, and in the north, where it is cold in summer, thunderstorms are quite rare.

? Why is ice slippery?

Scientists have been trying to figure out why you can slide on ice for the past 150 years. In 1849, the brothers James and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) put forward the hypothesis that the ice below us melts because we press on it. And so we are no longer sliding on ice, but on the formed film of water on its surface. Indeed, if the pressure is increased, the melting point of ice will decrease. However, as experiments have shown, in order to lower the melting point of ice by one degree, it is necessary to increase the pressure to 121 atm (12.2 MPa). Let's try to calculate how much pressure an athlete exerts on the ice when he slides on it on one skate 20 cm long and 3 mm thick. If we assume that the mass of the athlete is 75 kg, then his pressure on the ice will be about 12 atm. Thus, while skating, we can hardly lower the melting point of ice by more than a tenth of a degree Celsius. This means that it is impossible to explain sliding on ice in skates, and even more so in ordinary shoes, based on the assumption of the Thomson brothers, if the temperature outside the window, for example, is -10 °C.

In 1939, when it became clear that the slipperiness of ice could not be explained by lowering the melting temperature, F. Bowden and T. Hughes suggested that the friction force provides the heat necessary to melt the ice under the ridge. However, this theory could not explain why it is so hard to even stand on the ice without moving.

From the beginning of the 1950s scientists began to believe that the ice is still slippery because of the thin film of water that forms on its surface due to some unknown reasons. This stemmed from experiments in which the force required to separate ice balls that touched each other was studied. It turned out that the lower the temperature, the less force is needed for this. This means that there is a liquid film on the surface of the balls, the thickness of which increases with temperature, when it is still much lower than the melting point. By the way, Michael Faraday also thought so back in 1859, without any grounds for it.

Only in the late 1990s. the study of the scattering of protons, X-rays on ice samples, as well as studies using an atomic force microscope showed that its surface is not an ordered crystalline structure, but rather looks like a liquid. Those who studied the surface of ice with the help of nuclear magnetic resonance came to the same result. It turned out that water molecules in the surface layers of ice are able to rotate with frequencies 100 thousand times greater than the same molecules, but in the depths of the crystal. This means that water molecules on the surface are no longer in the crystal lattice - the forces that force the molecules to be in the nodes of the hexagonal lattice act on them only from below. Therefore, surface molecules do not have to "evade the advice" of the molecules in the lattice, and several surface layers of water molecules come to the same decision at once. As a result, a liquid film forms on the surface of the ice, which serves as a good lubricant when sliding. By the way, thin liquid films are formed on the surface of not only ice, but also some other crystals, such as lead.

Schematic representation of an ice crystal in depth (bottom) and on the surface

The thickness of the liquid film increases with increasing temperature, since more molecules break out of hexagonal lattices. According to some data, the thickness of the water film on the ice surface, which is about 10 nm at –35 °C, increases to 100 nm at –5 °C.

The presence of impurities (molecules other than water) also prevents the surface layers from forming crystal lattices. Therefore, it is possible to increase the thickness of the liquid film by dissolving some impurities in it, for example, ordinary salt. This is what utilities use when they are struggling with icing of roads and sidewalks in winter.

Causes of Thunderstorms There are three main components necessary for the formation of a thunderstorm front: moisture, a pressure drop, as a result of which a thundercloud is formed, and powerful energy. The main source of energy is the celestial body of the sun, which releases energy when steam thickens. Due to the fact that in winter there is a lack of sunlight and heat, such energy cannot be generated to a sufficient extent. The next component is moisture, but due to the entry of icy air, precipitation is observed in the form of snow. When spring arrives, the air temperature becomes higher, and a significant amount of moisture forms in the air, sufficient to form a thunderstorm. In general, the more it is in the air, the greater the power of the electric discharge of lightning.

An equally necessary component is pressure, the drops of which in the cold winter period also occur extremely rarely. For its formation, two opposite air flows are needed - warm and cold. Cold air prevails near the earth's surface in winter, which almost does not warm up, therefore, when meeting with the same cold air in the upper layers, there is no sufficient pressure jump. Based on all this, the objective possibility of a thunderstorm in winter is practically impossible. However, in recent years, the Earth is going through not the best of its times, due to human activity and other likely sources of influence. The climate is undergoing changes, we often began to observe a protracted autumn with a positive air temperature and there is a real opportunity in the future to observe real thunderstorms and heavy rains in winter.

Snowstorm in Russia There is such a thing as a snowstorm, or a snowstorm, but this phenomenon is extremely rare and occurs mainly on the shores of large non-freezing water bodies: seas and lakes. In Russia, snowstorms are most common in Murmansk, about once a year. However, this atmospheric phenomenon, although rare, can be observed on the territory of the European part of Russia. So, for example, they were recorded in Moscow in the first winter month in 2006, and twice. In the southern territories with a warm, humid climate, thunderstorms occur constantly, regardless of the season. Of course, rarely, but you can still observe this atmospheric phenomenon in winter in Russia. On the European and West Siberian territory of our country, thunderstorm fronts arise as a result of the penetration of cyclones coming from warm seas. At the same time, an increase in air temperature to positive is observed, and when two air streams meet - warm and cold from the north, thunderstorms occur. Recently, there has been an increase in thunderstorm activity. Most often this phenomenon occurs in the first two months of winter - December and January. At the same time, thunderstorms are very short, they last only a few minutes and mainly occur at air temperatures above 0 degrees, and only 3% are observed at low temperatures - from -1 to -9 According to folk beliefs, there are winter thunderstorms. Then a holiday is celebrated dedicated to the wife of the god Perun, her name is Dodola-Malanitsa, the goddess of lightning and feeding children. In the old days, the Slavs glorified her because she gave hope to people for the coming of an early spring.

Author Milichka asked a question in Climate, Weather, Time zones

why in winter there is no thunderstorm and thunder and got the best answer

Answer from Olesya[guru]
Thunderstorms sometimes occur in winter, but this is an extremely rare occurrence. Most likely, the explanation for why thunderstorms are an exclusively summer phenomenon lies in the fact that active thunderstorm formation requires the presence of water in the atmosphere simultaneously in three phases: gaseous (steam), liquid (water droplets in the form of fog, raindrops) and crystalline ( micro ice or snowflakes). All three phases are present only in summer conditions (it is cold at a height - water particles freeze there - here you have ice and snowflakes), and below, where it is warmer - the water is already in the liquid phase. In winter, one of the phases (liquid) falls out, because it is also cold below, and there are no conditions for water to be in a liquid state. .
Thunderstorms require moist air. And in winter, as you know, moisture, water turns into ice, snowflakes and falls to the ground. While in summer, moisture floats in the sky, in winter it is not there. The air is dry. And thunderstorms need moisture. Humidity is what causes electricity discharges.
Where does the electricity in the sky come from? Clouds walking in the sky carry billions of small particles of water and dust, interacting with the natural electromagnetic field of the earth, and are not charged. The earth has its own electromagnetic field. When the charge becomes critically large, a discharge occurs, which is called a thunderstorm. A thunderstorm is an electrical discharge accompanied by a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. Thunder is the sound that is produced by a flash of lightning.
.

Answer from Pavel Patin[newbie]
how they fuck! it's rare, but it does happen. e.g. February 1, 2015.
I can even give you a link
True, only 2 rolls, but shizanula. more like that.

Answer from Tyrannosaurus[guru]
And why in the summer there is no heavy snowfall and cold ....

Answer from Irina[newbie]
no temperature difference

Answer from Pavel Kabanov[guru]
Here is an example; --_On Saturday, December 5, an active atmospheric front moves from the Sea of Japan to the cold coast of the south of Primorye. It is this fact that explains the thunderstorms and lightning that happened in Vladivostok in the evening. Thunderstorms are caused by a temperature contrast of 10-13°C between warm and cold air masses. In the next 2 hours, the front will move to the continent and the thunderstorms will stop, it will get colder, the snow will remain.
Winter thunderstorms are quite rare. But in Primorye they have already happened. So, on December 5, 1949, there was a thunderstorm, the largest amount of precipitation per day (28 mm) fell in 1971, and a hurricane wind (40 m/s) was recorded in 1955.

Answer from Komandor[guru]
It happens.

Answer from Olga[guru]
Well, from what? The weather is unpredictable. In the morning you can leave the house in summer and come back in winter... Sometimes it snows even in June, and in December it rains... Mystery?!

Before finding out whether there is a thunderstorm in winter, one should determine what this natural phenomenon is in general, what causes it and without which it is impossible in principle.

Causes of a thunderstorm

Three main components are necessary for the formation of a thunderstorm front: moisture, a pressure drop, as a result of which a thundercloud is formed, and powerful energy. The main source of energy is the celestial body of the sun, which releases energy when steam thickens. Due to the fact that in winter there is a lack of sunlight and heat, such energy cannot be generated to a sufficient extent.

The next component is moisture, but due to the entry of icy air, precipitation is observed in the form of snow. When spring arrives, the air temperature becomes higher, and a significant amount of moisture forms in the air, sufficient to form a thunderstorm. In general, the more it is in the air, the greater the power of the electric discharge of lightning.

Interesting:

Interesting facts about snow

However, in recent years, the Earth is going through not the best of its times, due to human activity and other likely sources of influence. The climate is undergoing changes, we often began to observe a protracted autumn with a positive air temperature and there is a real opportunity in the future to observe real thunderstorms and heavy rains in winter.

Snowstorm in Russia

There is such a thing as a snow or snow thunderstorm, but this phenomenon is extremely rare and occurs mainly on the shores of large non-freezing water bodies: seas and lakes. In Russia, snowstorms are most common in Murmansk, about once a year. However, this atmospheric phenomenon, although rare, can be observed on the territory of the European part of Russia. So, for example, they were recorded in Moscow in the first winter month in 2006, twice and once on January 19, 2019.

In the southern territories with a warm, humid climate, thunderstorms occur constantly, regardless of the season. Of course, rarely, but you can still observe this atmospheric phenomenon in winter in Russia. On the European and West Siberian territory of our country, thunderstorm fronts arise as a result of the penetration of cyclones coming from warm seas. At the same time, an increase in air temperature to positive is observed, and when two air streams meet - warm and cold from the north, thunderstorms occur.

Recently, there has been an increase in thunderstorm activity. Most often this phenomenon occurs in the first two months of winter - December and January. At the same time, thunderstorms are very short, they last only a few minutes and mainly occur at air temperatures above 0 degrees, and only 3% is observed at low temperatures - from -1 to -9.