We heard it up here in Cockeysville, too - about a half-dozen thunderclaps just before 10 p.m. tonight as the cold front pushed through with a line of showers and gusty winds. Instruments at BWI recorded a gust to nearly 50 mph with rain and thunder around 10 p.m. as the squall line passed.

The anemometer on our backyard weather station is too sheltered by the house for accurate wind speed readings. But it recorded the frontal passage as the wind direction flipped from east to northwest.  I didn't notice any lightning, but there's no thunder without it. (We also recorded 0.06 inch of rain, pushing us past 3 inches for the month so far.)

There was almost no warning from the National Weather Service that we might get a thunderstorm in the region tonight. It's JANUARY, for crying out loud ! The NWS forecasters at Sterling had mentioned a slight possibility of showers, but there was no mention of thunderstorms until they issued a SPECIAL MARINE WARNING at 9:45 p.m. It advised of "a line of strong thunderstorms from 19 miles northwest of Aberdeen to 15 miles west of Washington DC, moving southeast at 35 mph."

That was followed by a "Nowcast" at 9:51 p.m. - about the same time we were hearing the thunderclaps in Cockeysville:

"A BROKEN LINE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS WITH STRONG GUSTY WINDS  WILL REACH THE INTERSTATE 95 CORRIDOR FROM WASHINGTON DC TO BALTIMORE BY 10 P.M...."

The NWS forecast office at State College, Pa., noted a "snow squall with thunder" moving through south-central PA at 9:23 p.m.