Massive Lightning Outbreak Hits The Northwest

One of the greatest Northwest lightning outbreaks in recent memory occurred today, with well over 5000 lightning strokes over the region.

Below are the strokes over the past 24 h:  very impressive.  

There were three major thunderstorm paths...one down the lowlands of western Washington, one along the coast, and a broad band in eastern Oregon and Washington.

Importantly, there were very few lightning strikes on the eastern side of the Cascades, which greatly reduced the chances of forecast fires there.

The massive lightning activity over northeast Oregon did start fires.

Normally, the Pacific Northwest is the poor stepchild of lightning activity in the U.S.  But look at the national lightning activity for the past 48 hr below.  For once, we were in the league of Florida or Texas!

The radar image this morning was enough to promote goosebumps for the meteorologically inclined:

And today's precipitation totals were quite significant, with several locations receiving over a half-inch (see today's totals below).

The visible satellite image  around 10 AM looked like something out of Oklahoma:

During the morning, several folks told me they saw funnel clouds, based on pictures like this:

I saw such clouds myself... which result from aircraft passing through a low cloud deck. NOT a tornado.

Let me end with a truly remarkable image.

Low clouds were left in the wake of the thunderstorms over western Washington, but Mount Rainier extended above the clouds. Eastern Washington is now experiencing plumes of smoke from fires ignited by the lightning over northeast Oregon. The green areas show lightning strikes.