If you were awake early Monday morning in Nome, you may have heard the crash of thunder or seen lightning flash across the now-dark midnight sky. The tail end of summer is going out with a bang—and quite a bit later than usual this year, said Jerry Steiger, head meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Nome.
It’s been an unusually warm September on the southern Seward Peninsula, with blueberry pickers still heading to the tundra. And while Steiger said thunderstorms this late in the season aren’t the norm, last year set an even stranger precedent.
“It’s not the latest one [we’ve had]. In fact, last year I remember we had a thunderstorm in October, and that was the latest we’ve ever had a thunderstorm,” said Steiger. “So, this could be the second or third [latest]. We don’t usually get them in September—it’s still pretty rare.”
If you managed to sleep through the racket Monday morning, Steiger said you missed a good show for the city of Nome.
“Well, it was a pretty good lightning bolt, you know, a flash of light, and then the first one was followed by thunder—roughly eight to ten seconds,” said Steiger. “The second strike was obviously a little bit closer…it was just to the east of Nome.”
Steiger said those two lighting strikes were probably cloud-to-cloud, and no major damage has been reported, besides KNOM’s own AM transmitter shutting down for a few hours in the middle of the night.
A good amount of rain came with the ruckus—about a third of an inch during the heaviest hour of the storm, which Steiger said is a pretty good downpour by Nome standards. And while he doesn’t anticipate any more summer thunder, Steiger said we’re likely in for some fall storms as September gives way to October.
With just one week left before the official start of fall, we’ll have to wait and see.
