Athens intense thunderstorm - slide show!

[petrosv]

Hello from Athens once again!
I have prepared an impressive slideshow (pps) capturing the impressive event of this past Saturday night (11-March-2006). A very strong hailstorm gave hailcover(!) in downtown Athens. Accompanied by lots of lightning striking the city (one of them landed very close to my house temporarely disabling my Davis VantagePro!) created a scenery of high adrenaline! Anyway, here is the slideshow. Enjoy!

http://nifada.com/diary/2006/images2006 ... eather.pps (3,5MB)

And this is one of those pics:

[isobar]

Great lightning picture! I would like be able to see the slide show without having to download it though, which is the prompt I keep getting.

The website is really cool. Nice job! Hope the Vantage Pro is back working now.

[angelwing]

Awesome! Thank you!

[petrosv]

Great lightning picture! I would like be able to see the slide show without having to download it though, which is the prompt I keep getting.

The website is really cool. Nice job! Hope the Vantage Pro is back working now.

I am sorry, I really don't know how to watch this without downloading it...
Yup, the station is back on track! It seems that the lightning discharged its batteries, but the sun recharched them!

[JonathanBelles]

wow, but the topic is intense hailstorm, not lighting storm

[Tstormwatcher]

where are the hail pictures? Lightning pics were great though.

[petrosv]

Ehm, yes, maybe I should have used the term "lightning storm". I called it "hailstorm" since most of the storm's precipitation was in the form of small hail (about 3mm in diameter). By the end of it we had hail cover...no pics of that though, sorry! I was busy fixing the station from a nearby lightning strike...
...
Thinking about it again, I just changed the title to "thunderstorm"

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Very interesting. One often times thinks of the Mediterranean as having a relatively "tranquil" climatic pattern. May I ask how often do these types of extreme weather events occur in your part of the world?

[petrosv]

Very interesting. One often times thinks of the Mediterranean as having a relatively "tranquil" climatic pattern. May I ask how often do these types of extreme weather events occur in your part of the world?

Actually thunderstorms (with or without hail) are not rare at all in Athens.
They occur more often in spring and autumn months, although summer storms are not uncommon either. We are lucky enough to experience snow events every year, although snow cover in the city center happens once every 2-3 years, and it only lasts for a couple of days or so. The truth is that we, greek weather enthusiasts, cannot complain, athough we always wish for more...