Dangerous lightning seen from 1st Thunderstorm of the season , Several fires reported from lightning, along with heavy downpours and small hail.

Video of some thunder from this afternoons storm.

The area was rocked by it's first thunderstorm of the season this afternoon, and it was a very loud one for the first. It brought with it very dangerous and frequent lightning with heavy downpours and small hail. Around 2:30PM showers developed around New Richmond and quickly developed into thunderstorms that moved northeast and followed just south of Highway 63 and weny from New Richmond to Clear Lake and Clayton to Rice Lake. I was quite surprised when I saw the small showers develop into storms, but what was most surprising was the amount of thunder and lightning it brought with it. I had several bright flashes of lightning with very loud thunder that happened at least 5 times. One bolt was strong enough that it rung our land line phone on it's hook, which was followed by a window rattling thunder. After the storm passed I heard fire sirens not too far away, and later my friend from the Turtle Lake fire department reported that there were 2 different lighting related fires, one in Turtle Lake an the other in Almena. The storm also dropped some heavy rain and pea sized hail at many locations in it's path, I picked up a quick 0.20" of rain in the storm that lasted about 15 minutes, bringing my total for the day to 0.37" of rain

Picture during the Thunderstorm March 20th

Some of what was interesting about this storm is it arrived while there was still substantial snowcover on the ground and the temperature at my location was in the upper 30s! It is actually quite rare to see thunderstorms with that frequent of lightning with still snow covering the ground. It would seem like this type of storm is more coming for the warm days of May rather then March! The heavy rain that came with it briefly lifted the fog, then after it ended, I could see fog billowing out of the woods and shaded areas.

Comparing this years 1st thunderstorm to last year

Comparing the first Thunderstorm date to 2010 you will not find that it is much later. Last year the first thunderstorm was seen at my location on March 12th, so this years first thunderstorm was about a week later then last year. March thunderstorms are not rare for the area, but they are more typical for our area in April.


Reports

Clayton, Pea sized hail with frequent dangerous lightning.

Turtle Lake, Lightning related fire.

Almena, Lightning related house fire

Rice Lake, pea sized hail frequent lightning