The National Weather Service estimates that every year there are approximately 100,000 thunderstorms in the U.S. About one-tenth, or 10,000 of these thunderstorms, are quite severe accompanied by torrential downpours, large-sized, crop-destroying hail and often deadly tornadic activity.
Around the rest of the world, there are more than 40,000 thunderstorms forming every day. Nearly 1,800 of these violent storms occur at any given hour on the planet. Let’s do the math. This works out to 16 million thunderstorms a year on a global scale. That’s a lot of ‘thunderboomers!’
In the U.S. alone, lightning kills dozens of people each year and causes thousands of fires, especially in the tinder-dry forests of the Far West.
Large hailstones cause at least $1 billion a year in property damage, plus widespread crop losses in wheat and other grains.
Hurricane-force straight-line winds can reach velocities exceeding 100 miles per hour or more. Downburst winds cause plane crashes.
‘Flash floods,’ associated with severe thunderstorms, caused rivers to overflow their banks and often result in human and livestock deaths.
Tornadoes that are spawned by violent thunderstorms and kill dozens of people every year, especially in the southern Great Plains and the Deep South, as we’ve seen in recent years in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri.
The ‘key’ to the size and power of a particular thunderstorm, according to climate scientists, lies in the strength of the UP and DOWN motions of its air flows that likewise produce large-size hail, strong wind gusts and torrential rains. ‘Supercells’ containing intense updrafts can lead to a series of deadly tornadoes.
We’re fortunate that we usually have only a dozen or so days, mainly in the afternoon and early evening hours, with thunderstorm activity in North Idaho each year. There were 13 days with thunderstorms in 2014 in Coeur d’Alene at my station on Player Drive. Some of these storms produced hail, winds exceeding 40 miles per hour and torrential downpours, usually lasting less than 20 minutes.
But, due to the fact that I see a very STORMY spring and early summer period in our part of the country, the opposite ‘extreme’ from the quiet winter of 2014-15 in the region, we may end up with as many as 15 to 20 days between mid April and mid September with thunderstorms. Fortunately, only a few of these storms will cause any major damage resulting from high winds, downed trees or lowland flooding. Besides, we’ll need the moisture after the recent dry and snowless period.
