PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Roughly 300 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and 1,000 cloud-to-cloud bolts flashed across Northwest Oregon and southwest Washington Thursday morning, Portland’s National Weather Service office confirmed.
KOIN 6 Meteorologist Josh Cozart reports that this level of electrical activity isn’t typical for the Portland area.
“All of this electrical activity isn’t something that the Portland area typically sees, but it does happen occasionally,” Cozart said. “It’s no surprise that we saw nearly 1,000 cloud-to-cloud lightning strikes with Thursday morning’s storms.”
A number of cloud-to-cloud strikes were recorded in Portland around 5 a.m. by KOIN 6 weather cameras on Thursday. Cloud-to-cloud lightning occurs more frequently, Cozart said, because it requires less energy than cloud-to-ground lightning.
“It takes more energy to produce cloud-to-ground lightning because the air outside of a cloud acts as a good insulator,” he said. “Clouds are good conductors. Thus, it takes more energy to fight through that insulated layer of the atmosphere. So, that’s why we saw only about 300 actual lightning strikes hit the ground.”