To his happy surprise, it turns out this weekend’s storm was a rare “thundersnow” event in which the blizzard was punctuated by occasional bursts of lightning. The Weather Channel itself has ...

Thundersnow – a thunderstorm that produces snow instead of rain – is sometimes reported during winter storms. Made famous by Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore, whose excitement at ...

Swap out the rain, and replace it with snow, and you have what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes as the “rare weather phenomenon” known as thundersnow.

However, police said that what people were actually hearing was the weather phenomenon known as "thundersnow". Two "extraordinarily loud" thunder claps were heard over the capital just before 05:00.