However, police said that what people were actually hearing was the weather phenomenon known as "thundersnow". Two "extraordinarily loud" thunder claps were heard over the capital just before 05:00.

To his happy surprise, it turns out this weekend’s storm was a rare “thundersnow” event in which the blizzard was punctuated by occasional bursts of lightning. The Weather Channel itself has ...

For days now, computer models have locked onto the potential for an unusually widespread display of thundersnow -- lightning produced during a snowstorm -- due to the strong lift that this storm ...