News

“49 days of continuous rain before thunder startles the sting” is unreliable

At 21:28 on March 1, 2019, in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, a lightning bolt pierced the sky and followed the thunder… As it was not yet the “sting” season of the twenty-four solar terms, the public said: “it rained continuously for 49 days before the thunder hit the sting. It seems that the wet and cold days in winter will continue until spring”. However, this proverb is not so reliable.
According to the statistics of the meteorological data of Jingzhou City from 1954 to 2001, 71% of the years were thunder before waking (March 5 or 6), and the average number of precipitation days greater than or equal to 0.1mm from March to April in these years was 25.4 days; The year of thunder after waking insects accounts for 29%, and the average number of precipitation days is 25.5 days. The latter is 0.1 days more than the former. It can be seen that this proverb is unreliable.
With global warming, some people say that the frequency of winter thunder has increased in recent years, which is also inconsistent with reality. Although winter is the least in the four seasons of thunderstorm distribution, the number of thunderstorm days in winter from 1950s to 1970s is no less than now in places such as Jingzhou City in subtropical zone.
It is worth pointing out that after the spring equinox, the warm and humid air in China’s southern ocean will be transported to the north from different heights, but the air-conditioning group that originally controlled China’s mainland is unwilling to show weakness. The warm and cold air in spring will confront each other and form frontal precipitation. When warm air rises and cold air sinks, it sometimes causes strong convection. When the warm and humid air rises to a certain condensation height, it will form a vertical cumulonimbus cloud. The strong electric field in the cloud will collide and discharge the positive and negative charges, suddenly produce electric light and loud noise, and the thunderstorm weather will also increase.