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Thundersnow hammers the East Coast, and so do the jokes

Make up your mind, Mother Nature. Weather can be so weird that sometimes two different kinds of storms collide.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper

Because the snowstorm currently hitting the East Coast isn't enough, it's also bringing with it thundersnow. That weather phenomenon is exactly what it sounds like: a snowstorm that features thunder and lightning. Very, very frightening.

"Thunderstorms accompanied by snow are usually of a different character than the 'normal' thunderstorm," Weather.com explained in 2015. "Thundersnow develops when the air is below freezing near the ground, and unlike most summer thunderstorms, it isn't near-ground air that rises all the way into the tall thunderstorm top. The instability is in only a shallow layer aloft. In thundersnow, the 'action' mainly takes place in a rather shallow layer that is usually near 20,000 feet and only around 5,000 feet thick."

The weird weather is lighting up Twitter and other social media.

Not everyone is buying it.

But some just love it.

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