I’ve lived all up and down the east coast of the US, from New England to Georgia as well as the mid Atlantic, in addition to spending early childhood in the Great Plains. I’ve noticed the Great Plains and the northern Appalachians have more thunderstorms than the central parts of the mid-Atlantic states or flatland New England. But also subtropical southern Georgia has a lot of thunderstorms, though they’re shorter in duration than up here in the mountains.
So…why? What’s the difference in “ingredients” in a thunderstorm versus a regular storm when rainfall amount is similar?
In: 5
From what I’ve been able to determine, the primary difference is that thunderstorms form faster than regular storms. To paraphrase the US National Weather Service, the more unstable the atmosphere is, the faster the storm will develop. The faster that the storm develops, the more likely it is that the storm will involve lightning and thunder.
Within the storm clouds, it generally seems to be that unstable conditions lead to larger updrafts within the clouds themselves. These updrafts result in the formation and collision of ice crystals of various sizes. The updrafts carry the lighter crystals upwards, while larger crystals sink within the cloud. The collisions between these crystals of different sizes is what causes the charge to build up within the storm that is then released as lightning. https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-science-electrification
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