Thunderstorms rolled through parts of the San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Central Valley early Tuesday morning, leading to thousands of lightning strikes and sparking several fires.
According to the San Francisco Bay Area bureau of the National Weather Service, nearly 4,800 total lightning strikes were reported in the region between midnight and 5:30 a.m., which includes in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. The storm brought very little rain, with most areas only seeing .1 inch or less.
A map provided by the weather service shows the lightning was concentrated in the inland East Bay and a wide swath of the Central Valley from Sacramento southward.
“Waking up to thunder and lightning this morning! This is the monsoonal moisture flowing north. Quite unusual to see this in the Valley this time of day / year,” said CBS Sacramento Chief Meteorologist Nic Merianos.
The weather service said lightning may be to blame for fires in southeastern Monterey County and southwest Fresno County early Tuesday morning…