Night Lightning Display After Busy Storm Day

Sea-breeze lightning storms came alive today across the southern half of the Florida peninsula. I filmed thunderstorms (some strong) in Martin, Okeechobee, St Lucie and Glades counties. It was a classic day for seabreeze storms as the east coast breeze boundary pushed inland and interacted with a washed up frontal boundary. I encountered some quarter size hail on the St Lucie County cell about 15 miles west of Ft Pierce and very persistent lightning.

This same storm is also to blame for starting numerous lightning triggered wildfires across Martin and Okeechobee counties. Florida is nearing the end of the dry season, but it remains extremely dry, and lightning on Monday had no problem getting fires going in a short amount of time.  The storms dissipated leaving sunshine and gusty easterly winds the helped to spread the fires fast. You can read more about these fires on this separate blog post.

The lightning picture above was taken later in the evening as another round of thunderstorms developed over Glades and Okeechobee counties likely off of outflow boundaries from earlier storms. The storm put on a pretty decent light show, but unfortunately could of added more wildfires problems over the Glades.

Comments

[Steve Sponsler]

Nice coverage Jeff! Glad to hear about your feature on National Geo this spring too! Stay safe out there in the anvil lightning. Steve.

[Jeff Gammons]

Thanks, Steve. Looks like the make cells developed up in CFL today. Southwest FL has a few ongoing cell that might put out some boundaries, but I think that's it for me. - Jeff

[viki]

I live just south of there in Port Saint Lucie. I had never seen anything like the electricity that came out of that storm. I was continuous lightening, many strikes at once over a very wide area. Stars were visible all around. The lightening storm stayed in one place, never ceasing to light up, for over 25 minutes. Even a gal who has lived here all her life said she had never seen anything like it. Looked like the rapture going on up there !