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South African Weather Service chooses Vaisala Thunderstorm Information System.
The South African Weather Service has chosen the Vaisala Thunderstorm Information System to provide national lightning data to aid in nowcasting and forecasting, advance severe storm warning, and precipitation prediction. The system will consist of nineteen Vaisala lightning sensors providing lightning coverage of South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS hereafter) is working to modernize its offering of meteorological services in a number of ways. With its acquisition of the Vaisala Thunderstorm Information System (TIS), SAWS will have the means to greatly improve its understanding of severe weather. With the advance warning provided by the Vaisala TIS, SAWS will be able to issue warnings of potentially dangerous lightning episodes so that the devastating effects of lightning strikes to vulnerable communities can be averted. Lightning is a great safety concern for the South African public as well as in airport ground operations (fueling and baggage handling), mining and construction, explosives and flammable materials handling, and any outdoor field work.
Improving electrical power delivery
The lightning information supplied by the Vaisala TIS will also be used to analyze and improve electrical power delivery within South Africa. ESKOM, South Africa's largest generator and supplier of electrical power, is interested in using lightning data to analyze outages caused by lightning strikes, to improve power restoration operations, and to design better lightning protection schemes.
Early thunderstorm detection over wide areas
The Vaisala Thunderstorm lightning sensors will provide SAWS with detailed cloud-to-ground and survey-level cloud-to-cloud lightning information. The Vaisala TIS will also track thunderstorms hundreds of kilometers outside of South Africa to give advance warning of approaching severe weather. The Vaisala display unit will be used to give forecasters a powerful tool for looking at real-time thunderstorm information. In addition, Vaisala software will be used for forensic analysis of thunderstorm data in order to identify geographic trends or specific events caused by lightning such as power outages, damage to manmade structures, and so on.
Author: Ed Bardo, Vaisala, Tucson, AZ, USA
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