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Midnight Storm
09/16/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
On the north coast of Alaska, next to the Arctic Ocean, sits the town of Barrow. It's on a
patch of flat, treeless tundra 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle. 50 degrees makes for
a warm day in Barrow, and the typical low falls into the 30s all summer, even with the
midnight sun. So it was a big deal on the night of June 19 of 2000 when Barrow got
socked with a good old-fashioned summer thunderstorm. Hi I'm Bryan Yeaton for the
Weather Notebook.
A thunderstorm wouldn't raise any eyebrows in the lower forty-eight, but for those who
grew up in Barrow, Alaska, this was the weather event of their lives. Up until this storm,
townspeople only heard a few distant thunderclaps about every ten years. This time,
Barrow got a loud flashy storm right in town. The locals had never seen such a
show.
The temperature had reached a high of 62 - sounds chilly but it was almost a record up
there. A strange quiet fell over the just before the storm darkened the summer sky
around 11 PM. One resident noticed that the ever-present snow buntings fell silent.
People--and dogs--were terrified by the lightning and thunder.
This wasn't the first thunderstorm to reach the Arctic coastline, but it's only one of a few
in recorded history for the entire Arctic Ocean. It's usually too cold above the icy water to
allow for the warm buoyant air that thunderstorms need.
Things were back to normal in Barrow on the day after THEIR storm of the century. The
temperature at 5 PM was a seasonable 34, and the snowbirds were singing once
more.
Our show is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory with support from
Subaru and the National Science Foundation.
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