It was a rude awakening for Abington residents Tuesday, following a massive early morning thunderclap that startled people out of bed, shook houses, set off car alarms, and scared household pets.
“I’ve seen some wild thunderstorms before resulting in hail the size of golf balls, but I can honestly say that I had never experienced anything like that noise,” said Joanne Demack-Harding, of Summer Street. “Truly terrifying.”
A line of thunderstorms rolled through the region during Tuesday’s pre-dawn hours. Shortly before 5 a.m., a storm cell produced a vivid lightning bolt that was immediately followed by a deafening explosion of thunder that roared and rumbled for nearly 30 seconds.
The early morning thunderclap hit like a rogue wave at sea, arriving out of nowhere, scaring people as much by its ferocity as the suddenness.
Nest camera footage recorded by Denise Jacobsen shows the intensity of the lightning strike and subsequent thunder, which rattled windows and set off car alarms.
Many people said on social media posts and in interviews with Abington News that the sound was so loud, fierce, and resonant that they thought something had exploded nearby or that there had been a natural disaster.
“I thought a literal bomb went off,” said Randolph Street resident Rachel Abell.
Joanne Melo-Gagnon, who used to live in California, said the extended, deep rumble made her think it was an earthquake.
“The sound continued, it was not just a quick ‘strike’ and done sound,” she said. “It was a loud, rumbling, earth moving sound.”
She went outside to check her Jean Caroll Road home, wondering if the cupola had fallen off, as it did this past fall.
“Then I looked up and down the neighborhood to see if we had been struck, if there was a fire anywhere,” Melo-Gagnon said.
Orange Street resident Heidi Hernandez also did a house check to make sure her house hadn’t been damaged.
“It sounded like it was straight out of ‘The Avengers’,” she said of the thunderclap.
Hernandez wasn’t the only one with other-worldly gods and demi-gods on their half-awake mind.
“Who pissed off Zeus?,” Rachel Collins recalled her son, Ricky, asking.
But the real culprit was just Mother Nature who’s in the middle of trying to figure out which season it is, said Nicole Corbett, the science department head at Abington High School.
“Spring is a funky time in these parts,” Corbett said.
Cold air and warm fonts are meeting and overlapping, causing unstable weather patterns, and sometimes severe storms. It also results in louder thunder.
“I believe these thunderstorms were elevated thunderstorms versus surface-based thunderstorms,” Corbett told Abington News. “Elevated storms form when warm, humid air is trapped aloft and it’s cooler at the surface, as opposed to the summer ones where it’s hot and humid near the surface. The warm air traps the cold air closer to the surface and enhance thunder sound waves.”
This unique weather pattern always caused the dramatic, wavy clouds that were seen over the region Tuesday afternoon, called asperitas clouds.
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