Lightning damage on a tree on Case Road in South Thurston County Saturday morning.
Damage from lightning strikes to a house on 180th near Case Rd. Lightning struck trees and houses including the one that started a fire in an attic, according to the West Thurston RFA.
Thunderstorms put on a show Saturday for residents of Western Washington, namely in Lewis, Pierce and King Counties.
The National Weather Service in Seattle reported Lewis County had 264 confirmed lightning strikes between when the storm started through 1:45 p.m. on Saturday, 38 were reported in Thurston County.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Steven Reedy said an event like Saturday’s is uncommon in the state and usually only happens once every year.
“Typically, when we see thunderstorm development over western Washington, it’ll kind of kickstart off the Cascades and then sometimes those storms may drift westward,” Reedy said. “For this particular instance, though, we had a strong low-pressure system create instability early in the morning.”
He added that it’s not only rare for a thunderstorm to be triggered in the morning, but the fact that the storm started in the south central portion before heading north is also unusual.
The duration of the storm, though, didn’t deviate from what was expected. Reedy said thunderstorms typically start to die out due to a lack of sunlight and that’s what he saw with Saturday’s storm as well.
“Once the system is fired that early, in some ways, they end up killing themselves,” Reedy said. “As they generate and balloon up, the clouds and the anvils associated with the cumulonimbus clouds that develop to form these thunderstorms, they end up blocking out the sun that would help fuel those storms to continue going.”
He said the storm started to die down by 12 p.m. on Saturday and that was the best-case scenario for the NWS. Additionally, the significance of the impact on the environment was lessened due to pre-existing moisture on the ground.
“I think we got a report of a tree exploding, for example, so, I mean, these things can happen,” Reedy said. “But, if we’re looking for, say, lightning ignitions and potential wildfires, this particular instance you’re probably not going to see anything.”
West Thurston Regional Fire Authority Captain and Public Information Officer Lanette Dyer also referred to Saturday’s storm as one that seems to happen once every year. In her experience, she also pointed to elevated thunderstorms that have been seen once every four to five years.
However, Saturday’s storm wasn’t of the four-to-five-year magnitude.
“This is not what we see on even a bigger scale,” Dyer said. “There’s nothing normal about it when you’re in the thick of things, but this is really something that’s not that uncommon that we see once a year. It kind of catches people by surprise and we forget what thunder and lighting can really do.”
She said south Thurston County residents woke up on Saturday to something they “weren’t really prepared for.”
“You saw on the news that the storm was coming, but you never know what it’s going to be like until it hits,” Dyer said. “We train for these types of events, we’re ready for them, we’re equipped to take everything down from trees to access people’s homes and we try really hard to make sure that we keep ourselves and everyone else safe.”
From Dyer’s perspective, Southwest Washington “dodged a bullet” in terms of damage caused by the storm and other impacts that could’ve come as a byproduct of the strikes.
With no significant damage from the storm reported, Reedy said the storm provided residents across the region with shock value early Saturday morning before it ultimately dissipated.
“Nobody expects to wake up at 7:30 in the morning to a loud noise outside,” Reedy said. “Once everybody woke up, they were really excited about it.”
