ABC News - On Valentine's weekend in 2015, winter storm Neptune pummeled Boston. Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore was outside reporting on the blizzard when a sudden purple flash illuminated the sky. "Oh yes! We got it baby!" he yelled, repeatedly leaping in the air. The "it" was thundersnow -- the relatively rare, sometimes unnerving, sometimes thrilling appearance of lightning and thunder during a snowstorm.
"The Geostationary Lightning Mapper is an excellent tool to be able to really capture all the lightning that happens in these more rare scenarios like thundersnow," said Eric Bruning, a meteorologist at Texas Tech University. "It's always valuable to have these studies that are taking a look at these less studied parts of the atmosphere."