Simultaneous Storms in Canada & U.S. Bring Heavy Lightning

A strong storm left hundreds of people without power in the Ontario County town of Bristol, New York, U.S.A.

The storm’s heavy rains, strong wind gusts and extremely high frequency of lightning brought down power lines and trees in upstate New York.

Earth Networks Total Lightning Network detected over 50,000 lightning strikes in a short 6-hour period on 29 May 2016. The below video shows both the in-cloud (purple) and cloud-to-ground (yellow) lightning during the storm.

The video above shows two separate storms, the one in New York and another in Canada, that involved a high frequency of lightning that day. The Canadian towns of Mont-Laurier, Maniwaki and Aumond, all located to the north of Ottawa, saw the most lightning strikes during that storm system. The below picture accounts for just two hours of lightning strikes over the region.

Earth Networks sent out seven Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts following the storm from Ontario County across eastern New York, U.S.A. These Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts, or DTA’s, are represented below by purple polygons. DTA’s are issued when an incoming storm possesses an amount of total lightning that indicates other dangerous factors like microbursts, hail and heavy rains.

The storm brought not only the dangers of lightning, but high winds as well. The Bristol Fire Department reported that several poles were down along Route 20A. A 50-foot tree also fell at a Bristol home.

Luckily, no one was hurt during the hour of the storm and power was restored to most homes in the area the next day.