blog Hurricanes Bring Wind... and Lightning Brooke Pearson Global Solutions Manager Published: Sep 14, 2018 Environmental and Public Health Protection Weather & Environment As Hurricane Florence approaches the east coast of the United States, threatening catastrophic consequences, it gives us a unique opportunity to study meteorological phenomena, including the interaction between lightning and hurricanes. Better understanding of how lightning behaves in hurricanes should ultimately provide forecasters with better tools to predict hurricane behavior - and that's where Vaisala's Global Lightning Detection Network comes in. In the past, forecasters and researchers have had only limited access to lightning information in hurricanes. Hurricanes spend much of their lives over the ocean. Until recently, lightning detection was largely limited to the land. This is no longer true - Vaisala's global network, the Global Lightning Dataset (GLD360), can reach over huge distances, detecting lightning across continents and oceans with a precision previously unavailable. The image above shows data from Vaisala's Thunderstorm Manager software. The colored spots indicate lightning strokes. Researchers have been exploring the relationship between hurricane intensification and lightning, both in the eyewall and in the outer rainbands. You can see this graphically in the Thunderstorm Manager, as the lightning strikes follow Florence's frightening swirls. The same capabilities that allow GLD360 to track lightning so accurately in hurricanes are also being used to forecast weather, provide safety warnings, and understand future weather events all over the world. Ultimately, improved forecasting will help us better predict the course of future hurricanes and mitigate their damage. View an animation of lightning data at mid-day, September 13
Thunderstorm Manager Web-based worldwide thunderstorm tracking with the most accurate lightning detection including up-to-the-second lightning data and real-time lightning alerts.
Global Lightning Detection Network (GLD360) Reliable storm and lightning information with unmatched efficiency and location accuracy from a sensor network that can detect thunderstorms anywhere in the world, even outside the range of radars or satellites.